Hoseikan Yusentei

A Pavilion Built for Imperial Guests at Tamatsukuri

Hoseikan Yusentei (保性館幽泉亭, also written Hōseikan Yūsentei) is a single-storey timber pavilion at Tamatsukuri Onsen in Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture, built in 1931 as lodging reserved for members of the imperial family and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 10 May 2018.

It stands inside the grounds of Hōseikan, an inn on the Tamayu River, and it was never a general guest wing. The commission went to Kawashima Tokujirō (1871-1955), a master carpenter from what is now the Higashi-Izumo district of Matsue and one of the leading builders of the Izumo region between the Meiji years and the prewar Shōwa period. His work includes the Hiunkaku at the Kowata Family Residence in Shinji, Matsue, put up in 1902 for a visit by the crown prince who later became Emperor Taishō, and now an Important Cultural Property.

The building is timber, single-storey, tiled, with a footprint of 112 square metres. Repairs were carried out in 1989. The registered owner is Shinryō Co., Ltd.

The inn's own account of its origins runs further back. It traces the beginnings of the modern hot spring to the Edo period, when the Matsudaira lords of Matsue domain established a villa here called the Ochaya and entrusted the rights over the source spring to an ancestor of the house, who held the post of yu-no-suke, keeper of the spring. The name Hōseikan is said to date from 1897, given by a senior Daitokuji priest known as Tōkai after a stay, in the sense of a place where one keeps one's nature at ease. Both accounts come from the inn rather than from documentary sources, and are best treated as its own tradition.

Why the Register Singles Out Its Form

Registration was granted on 10 May 2018 under register number 32-190, and the criterion cited is that the building provides a model of form and design. That criterion is the more demanding of the two commonly applied to registered buildings, and it points at the object itself rather than at the street it sits on.

A word on the category, since it is often confused. Registration is not the same thing as designation. An Important Cultural Property is designated by the state for outstanding national value and its alteration is tightly controlled. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property is entered on a register, generally covering buildings roughly fifty years old or more, with the owner asked to notify the authorities before major changes. The framework was created to keep working buildings working, which is why a pavilion inside an operating inn qualifies.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs summarises the building in terms of a tension between weight and lightness. The composition is substantial: a hipped-and-gabled roof in pantiles, ringed by lower roofing in the shikoro manner. Against that, the eaves are thin and project deeply, an effect achieved with steel members, and they make the whole read as light. The interior is described as an inventive sukiya-style scheme drawing on a wide range of designs, and the Agency closes by calling it an accomplished work in which the high skill of the district's carpenters is on display.

Details Worth Slowing Down For

Start with the roof, because that is where the argument of the building is made. Smoked pantiles carry a plain ridge of stacked ridge tiles over a hipped-and-gabled form. On the east face a canopy shaped like a carriage porch reaches out, its undulating gable covered in wood shingle. That canopy is not original to the position: it was moved here in 1989 from the front gate that once stood to the southeast. Look up into it and the frog-leg strut carries a sacred mirror and a comma-shaped magatama bead, emblems chosen to suit a building reserved for imperial guests.

Then count the roofs. The hipped-and-gabled form plus two tiers of extended eaves gives three layers stacked one above another. Steel concealed in the roof space is what allows the overhang to run so far on so slender a profile, and the result is that heavy clay pantiles carry something of the lightness usually associated with shingle or cypress bark. That trick is the reason the registration singles out form.

Inside, the carpentry turns showy in a controlled way. Many varieties of fine timber appear in the alcove fittings, staggered shelves and study bay. One room is ceilinged with two wide cedar boards spanning its full width, a mirror ceiling with no supporting battens in sight. Ceilings, transoms and sliding doors carry unusually elaborate design throughout. The detail the inn singles out as peculiar to Yūsentei is the use of cross-cut mulberry sections in the transoms and interior fittings, a material rarely handled this way.

Now the practical part, which matters here more than at most properties. Yūsentei is preserved for viewing rather than for lodging. The special room where Emperor Shōwa stayed cannot be booked, though the inn states that it can be seen. Materials on Kawashima Tokujirō, explanations of how each room is put together and carpentry tools of the period are laid out for visitors, which is more interpretation than most registered buildings offer. Viewing is arranged through the inn, so anyone not staying overnight should contact Hōseikan in advance rather than turning up.

The address is 1191-1 Tamatsukuri, Tamayu-chō, Matsue City. Tamatsukuri-Onsen Station on the JR San-in Main Line is about five minutes away by car or taxi, and central Matsue roughly twenty minutes. Ask about a pick-up when you contact the inn.

Tamatsukuri itself deserves the extra hour. The spring appears in the Izumo no Kuni Fudoki, the eighth-century regional gazetteer, which makes it one of the oldest documented hot springs in Japan, and its name comes from the ancient bead-making carried on in this valley. Tamatsukuriyu Shrine stands a short walk upstream.