Hiraoka Family Residence Main House

About the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House

The Hiraoka Family Residence Main House (平岡家住宅主屋, Hiraoka-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a farmhouse in Osato, Kaiyo-cho, Kaifu-gun, Tokushima Prefecture, built in 1872 and entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2022. It is the core of the five registered structures of the Hiraoka Family Residence and covers 120 square meters. Work was also done on it in the early Showa era (1926 to 1945).

The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House as a model of form. The kitchen, barn and both walls of the same estate were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape; only the main house rests on the other criterion.

A Two-Story Shell Around an Old Floor Plan

From outside, the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House has a gabled roof (Kirizuma-zukuri) with its entrance on the long side (Hirairi), lean-to eaves (Geya) wrapped around all four sides, and walls clad in horizontal weatherboarding (Shitami-itabari). The Agency's description calls it two-story; the structure entry in the database reads "single-story with a partial second floor", which suggests an upper floor set over part of a one-story house.

The exterior is a developed Meiji farmhouse, but the rooms inside follow an older pattern. The east side was once a broad earth-floored work area (Doma). The raised west side uses the four-room Yomadori plan, two rooms in front and two behind, in the staggered version where the partitions of the front and back rows do not line up.

The Council for Cultural Affairs summed it up this way: the house is two-story and outwardly advanced, yet its plan keeps the standard layout of the region's pre-modern farmhouses. A Meiji exterior around an Edo-period way of arranging rooms is what earned it registration as a model of form.

The Front Room and the Central Entrance

The finest room is the omote-zashiki, the front reception room facing the garden. It has a Tokonoma alcove, and a narrow open veranda runs along its garden side. That garden is enclosed by the stone west wall along the street.

The other feature to look for is the entrance. In the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House, a formal entrance one ken wide (about 1.8 meters) opens into the middle room of the raised floor. Everyday traffic came and went through the earth-floored area; this central door was probably the formal way in for guests.

The national database publishes two photographs of the house: the exterior seen from the south and the ground-floor front room. Since the interior is not open, these are currently the only way to see the alcove and the room itself.

Visiting the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House

There is no public opening of the Hiraoka Family Residence Main House, and the interior cannot be visited. The south wall runs across its front and the stone west wall encloses the garden, so the house cannot be taken in as a whole from the street.

No guidance on photography is published. Look at the layered roof and eaves over the walls without entering the grounds. Directions are on the Hiraoka Family Residence page.