Matsumoto Family Residence Main House

About the Main House

The Matsumoto Family Residence Main House (松本家住宅主屋, Matsumoto-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-story wooden house built in 1912 in Chuo-cho, Mibu Town, Tochigi Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 21, 2013. It has a building area of 142 m² and a Yosemune-zukuri hipped roof covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles.

The house stands on a plot beside the Nikko Nishi Kaido, the old highway through Mibu, and faces west toward it. A projecting entrance porch with its own Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof sits at the front. Behind it, the formal rooms (zashiki) run in a line from west to east, and a veranda wraps the southeast side.

Of the six registered structures on the estate, the Matsumoto Family Residence Main House is the youngest. The gates and the three storehouses date to around 1907; the house followed a few years later, once the rest of the compound was already in place.

Why It Was Registered

The registration number is 09-0206, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out in the Matsumoto house is its carving. The gable ornament of the entrance porch and the openwork Ranma transoms inside are decorated with cranes and similar motifs, which the Agency describes as skillful and richly ornate.

The Mibu Town Board of Education adds context. The Matsumotos here are a branch of the family that served as the local Honjin, the official lodging for daimyo and senior travelers on the highway, and the town sees features of honjin architecture in how the buildings are arranged. It does not say which features. What is clear is that the house sits at the center of that arrangement, its roofed porch facing straight through the front gate to the road.

What to Look For

Start with the porch. A hip-and-gable roof turns its triangular gable toward the viewer, so the carved ornament rises above you as you approach the door. Cranes, a traditional emblem of long life, were a natural choice for the point where guests were received.

Inside, the transoms between the formal rooms carry related motifs. They are worked in Sukashibori, openwork carving in which the board is cut right through along the outlines of the design, so light from the next room shows the pattern in silhouette. Matching the imagery outside and in suggests how much care went into the house in the first year of the Taisho era.

Look too at the roof line. Only the porch has the hip-and-gable form; the main body is a plain hipped roof. From the front the small gabled roof sits against the larger one and marks the entrance clearly.

Visiting

The Matsumoto Family Residence Main House is a private home, and its interior is not open to the public. The rooms with the carved transoms can be seen only during special openings of the estate.

The house stands inside the grounds behind the front gate. How much of the porch gable can be seen from the public road on an ordinary day has not been confirmed. If you stop outside, keep photography to the street. Access and opening information for the whole estate are on the Matsumoto Family Residence page.