Sumi Family Residence Main House

What Is the Sumi Family Residence Main House?

The Sumi Family Residence Main House (角家住宅主屋, Sumi-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a large farmhouse in Nishiarashima-cho, Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, built in 1906 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2003. It is a two-story timber building with a tiled roof, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs records its footprint as 237 square meters.

The house stands near the middle of the estate and is the anchor of the four registered structures of the Sumi Family Residence, the others being a gate row house, a detached guest room and a brick chimney. It carries registration number 32-0014 and was registered under the criterion of being a "model of form".

Nine Rooms in Three Rows

The Agency's description gives the plan in a single line, and it is a generous one. The raised-floor living area of the Sumi main house is made up of nine rooms set out in three rows of three, with an earth-floored Doma work area along the north side. Nine rooms on the main floor alone is a clear measure of the household's size.

The upper floor does not cover the whole building. Only the western part has a second story, with three rooms. The Agency does not say how the space above the doma was used.

The records disagree on the house's size. The national database gives 237 square meters, while Shimane Prefecture's list of registered properties gives 285 square meters. This page follows the national figure.

Eaves on Four Sides and Namako Walls

The Agency singles out the exterior of the Sumi main house as imposing, and the reasons are easy to list. The roof is a hipped-and-gabled Irimoya-zukuri form covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles, and a tiled pent roof, or Hisashi, runs around all four sides below it. With a second band of roof wrapping the walls, the house reads as broader and heavier than its footprint.

The walls just above those pent roofs, and the lower part of the gable walls, are finished as Namako-kabe, the tile-and-plaster lattice that gives many old storehouses their grid of white lines. Here it forms a crisp strip between the pent roofs and the plain wall above. The Agency's note on the neighbouring gate row house remarks that, unlike the main house, it does not use red tiles, which indicates that the main house roof does.

The Agency calls the Sumi Family Residence Main House a fine example of large-scale vernacular architecture.

Visiting the Sumi Family Residence Main House

No public opening of the Sumi main house has been announced, and no owner appears in the public records. Treat it as a private home and stay off the grounds. Anyone hoping to visit or take photographs should contact the Culture Division of the Yasugi City Board of Education in advance.

Because the main house sits in the middle of the plot, any view from outside would be of the big irimoya roof and its layered eaves rising behind the gate row house. Whether it can actually be seen from the road has not been confirmed. Directions and general visiting conditions are covered on the Sumi Family Residence page.