Ohashi Saryo Front Gate

One Front Gate, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2006

Ohashi Saryo Front Gate (大橋茶寮表門, Ohashi Saryo Omotemon) stands at 5-6-6 Toranomon, Minato Ward, Tokyo, a Showa-period structure entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 3 August 2006. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one building.

The structure is timber, tiled, with an opening 2.7 metres wide. The date field reads mid-Showa and the year field about 1949.

A Tea-House Gate of Logs Under a Tiled Roof

A light way of framing and a roof of some weight meet in one gate.

The Agency records a ridged gate 2.7 metres wide, timber, gabled and roofed in pantiles. A ridged gate sets a gabled roof on two posts.

It continues that logs are used for the purlins, rafters and other members, in the tea-house manner. Logs here are timbers left round rather than squared.

The Furo gate of the same tea house is roofed in copper and the middle gate in cedar bark. Of the three gates, only the front gate is tiled.

The front gate at the Akagi residence has posts 8 sun square and double plank doors studded in 3 rows: there, squared timber and studs.

Here the framing of logs shows the lightness of the tea-house manner, and only the roof is of tile.

Praised for Forming a Plain and Quiet Prospect

The assessment names not abundance of ornament but its absence.

The Agency closes that the gate forms the plain and quiet prospect of the tea house.

Its doors are double plank doors, its walls of earth plaster with horizontal boarding below. It is made of humble materials: board, earth and logs.

The Obaraya salt storehouse is closed on the words plain in design throughout: plainness stated and left there.

Here plainness is given as the reason the gate forms a quiet prospect. Lack of ornament is itself the merit.

As the entrance to a place for tea, the gate's bearing shows the character of the whole tea house.

The Widest of the Three Gates

The first gate one passes from outside is the widest.

The front gate is 2.7 metres wide, the Furo gate 1.5 metres, the middle gate in the garden 1 metre.

The Agency places the front gate a little north of the middle of the east side of the grounds.

The Yamabuki tea room stands at the middle of the same east side, with the entrance of the tea house on the north side of its main room. Gate and entrance both lie on the east side, a little north of centre.

The middle gate is said to bind the tea rooms together as the gate for passing between them.

This one is the gate between the world outside and the tea house.

Visiting

The gate stands at 5-6-6 Toranomon, Minato Ward, Tokyo.

The Furo gate, middle gate, wall and the tea rooms Yamabuki, the Joan copy, Aoi, Katsura and Shubinan were registered on the same day. All 9 are said to date from about 1949.

The wall of the same tea house runs 53 metres, showing its posts on the east front with horizontal boarding below. The boarding below the front gate matches it.

No owner is recorded, and opening and terms follow the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.

A tea house of this kind is a place furnished with buildings for the tea ceremony.