Yamamoto Family Residence

About the Yamamoto Family Residence

The Yamamoto Family Residence (山本家住宅, Yamamoto-ke Jūtaku) is a town-house property at 71 Mori, Hakuta-cho, Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, built between the late Edo period and the Meiji era, whose seven buildings were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2005. The seven are the main house, the front storehouse, the new storehouse, the rice storehouse, the rear nagaya, the kamaya and the small storehouse. They carry consecutive registration numbers, 32-0034 to 32-0040, and were all registered on February 9, 2005, as Registered Tangible Cultural Property structures.

The estate faces east onto the old road through Mori, with the main house standing at the front. Behind it the plot runs a long way back to the west, and along that strip sit four storehouses, two small service buildings and, on the far western edge, a two-story rear block. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house as an early-Meiji Machiya that serves as a landmark for the district.

The dates do not run the way you might expect. The oldest three, the rear nagaya, the kamaya and the small storehouse, are dated to the late Edo period (1830 to 1867). The main house and the new storehouse went up in 1884, and the front and rice storehouses in the early Meiji era. At the Yamamoto Family Residence, some of the outbuildings at the back predate the house on the street.

The Yamamoto Family Residence in the Mori Townscape

Mori was once the castle town of the small Mori domain, assessed at 10,000 koku of rice. The Yasugi City Tourism Association presents it as a district where samurai houses from the Edo period survive alongside old family homes, merchant houses and the estates of wealthy farmers, most of them strung along the old road. The Yamamoto Family Residence main house is one of the buildings facing that road.

On the same day in 2005 that the seven Yamamoto buildings were registered, buildings of two other Mori estates, the Okuno Honke and Okuno Shogo family residences, were registered as well. They stand at different addresses and are separate properties.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

Nearly everything at the Yamamoto Family Residence apart from the main house is tucked behind it. The front storehouse sits directly to the rear, with the new storehouse beside it to the west. The kamaya stands behind the main house toward the south, and the small storehouse continues westward from it. Further back comes the rice storehouse with its cattle shed, and the rear nagaya closes off the western edge of the plot.

The four storehouses each had their own job. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the front storehouse held household furnishings and utensils, the new storehouse clothing, and the small storehouse tools; the rice storehouse, as its name says, held rice, with a cattle shed attached on its west side. All four are two-story fireproof storehouses in the Dozo-zukuri manner, with gabled roofs (Kirizuma-zukuri) of pantiles (Sangawara-buki) set as a separate "floating" roof (Okiyane).

None of them is large. The main house covers 199 square meters; the rear nagaya 47, the front storehouse 23, the new and rice storehouses 19 each, and the kamaya and small storehouse only 10 square meters apiece. Packed tightly behind the house, these small buildings show how a long, narrow town-house plot was put to work.

Each building has its own page covering its structure and what to look for.

Visiting the Yamamoto Family Residence

The Yamamoto Family Residence is not promoted as a visitor attraction, and the owner's name is not given in the national database. Assume the interior cannot be visited and view the buildings from the road. Because most of the outbuildings stand behind the main house, you will not see far into the estate from the street. No official guidance on photography could be found; as this is a private home, stay off the property and avoid peering in through gateways.

By public transport, take a Yasugi City "Yellow Bus" on the Hakuta (Kusano) to Yasugi line from JR Yasugi Station on the San'in Line and get off at the Mori stop. The ride takes about 25 to 30 minutes. There are only a handful of buses a day and some do not run on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, so check the city's timetable before you set out. By car, Mori is about 15 minutes from Yasugi Interchange on the San'in Expressway.

For questions about the Mori townscape, the Yasugi City Tourism Association lists the Mori Community Center (phone 0854-37-0225) as the contact.