Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House

What Is the Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House?

The Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House (川崎睦男家住宅主屋, Kawasaki Mutsuo-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a 1903 townhouse facing the old Tokaido highway in Tehara, Ritto City, Shiga Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 21 April 1998. It is a single-storey wooden building with a tiled roof and a building area of 151 square meters.

It stands at the front of the estate, right on the old highway, with the east storehouse beside it and the north storehouse and detached wing behind. The Agency for Cultural Affairs writes the name with the variant character 川﨑.

Why It Was Registered: An Old Townhouse Form

Of the four registered buildings on the estate, the Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House is the only one registered as a model of form, under number 25-0029. The other three were registered for what they add to the streetscape; the main house was valued for its own design.

The agency points to three features: latticed windows on the ground floor painted with bengara red, a Tsushi-nikai upper level with plastered walls, and a ridge crowned by a smoke vent. All three belong to the Machiya townhouses built in this area since the Edo period, and the point is that a house put up in 1903, late in the Meiji era, kept that older form intact.

The database lists the building as single-storey, while its description mentions an upper level. There is no contradiction. A tsushi-nikai is a low-ceilinged loft under the roof that does not count as a full storey, so townhouses like this one are classed as single-storey buildings.

Reading the Facade from Bottom to Top

Standing on the old Tokaido, look at the Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House from the ground up. First come the ground-floor lattices. Bengara is a red iron-oxide pigment that turns timber a deep reddish brown, and here it colors the lattice fitted into the street-facing windows.

Above them is the tsushi-nikai. Its outer walls are sealed with earthen plaster and kept lower than the ground floor. With few openings, the upper level gives the house the low, heavy look of a highway townhouse.

Then look up at the ridge. The small roof set on top of it is the smoke vent, a feature generally built to let smoke from the cooking stove escape through the roof.

To the right stands the east storehouse, its gable end turned to the road. The pairing of the red lattice front and the white gable wall of the storehouse is the view that only the front of the estate gives.

Visiting the Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House

The Kawasaki Mutsuo Family Residence Main House is a private home, and its interior is closed to the public.

Because it faces the old Tokaido, the exterior can be seen from the street. To take in the smoke vent on the ridge as well as the lattice, step back and view the house from the far side of the road. Please stay on the public road and do not enter the property.