Aoki Family Residence Gate

What Is the Aoki Family Residence Gate?

The Aoki Family Residence Gate (青木家住宅門, Aokike Jūtaku Mon) is a timber four-legged gate built in 1915 in Mima-cho, Mima City, Tokushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 1998. It stands north of the main house, facing the road.

It has a tiled roof, and walls run off to either side. A Shikyakumon, or four-legged gate, hangs its doors between two main posts and braces them with a pair of Hikaebashira support posts in front and behind, four in all, which carry the roof. Of everything at the Aoki Family Residence visible from the road along the north side, the Aoki Family Residence Gate is the one that acts as the estate's face.

The Aoki Family Residence Gate: Registration and Original Role

The Aoki Family Residence Gate was registered on 9 October 1998 as number 36-0015, under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Aoki Family Residence Gate was originally a rear gate, the way through the garden to the formal Zashiki reception rooms of the main house. It was not the everyday entrance but a route to the best rooms by way of the garden.

Rear gate or not, it also shapes how the estate presents itself to the road, and the Agency credits it with carefully considered details that give the whole household layout its finish.

What to Look For at the Aoki Family Residence Gate: Two Faces, Two Roofs

The thing to see at the Aoki Family Residence Gate is how the roof is laid. Only the slope facing the road is in Hongawarabuki; the garden slope is in Sangawara-buki.

Hongawara roofing alternates flat tiles with half-round cover tiles, so the slope shows strong vertical ribs and looks weighty. Sangawara pantiles combine both shapes in a single tile and give a lighter, flatter surface. The heavier, more formal roofing goes only where passers-by will see it: a clear division between front and back.

The position of the gate is considered too. The Aoki Family Residence Gate stands a little back from the line of the walls on either side, on the garden side. Rather than sitting flush with the walls, it is recessed just enough to leave a small space in front, so that from the road it reads as a building in its own right.

Seeing the Aoki Family Residence Gate

Since the Aoki Family Residence Gate faces the road on the north side, its exterior can be seen from outside. The ribbed hongawara roof and the gate's slight recess from the wall line are clearest from the road.

To see the pantiled garden slope you have to look back at the gate from inside the grounds. The Aoki Family Residence is a Mima City facility, and visits or use need to be arranged in advance with the Regional Learning Promotion Division of the Mima City Board of Education. There is no published information on whether the doors of the Aoki Family Residence Gate are open for passage (checked 1 October 2026).