Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan

Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan, the Only Hip-and-Gable Roof

Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan (大橋茶寮茶室守貧庵, Ōhashi Saryō Chashitsu Shuhin-an) is a tea room built around 1949 at the Ohashi Saryo tea house, 5-6-6 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 3 August 2006.

It stands against the south edge of the grounds, a little east of centre: a single-storey timber building of 19 square metres under a hip-and-gable (Irimoya-zukuri) roof of pantiles.

The other four tea rooms here all have plain gabled roofs; Shuhinan alone has the hipped form.

Waiting Bench and Privy in One Small Building

Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan was registered under the criterion of being not easily reproduced, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs sums it up as a tea room of high quality.

Its 6-mat room has an alcove and a concealed Buddhist altar, a shrine fitted behind doors so that it does not read as an altar when closed.

A corridor runs along the south side; its east end is a privy, and beyond that a Koshikake-machiai waiting bench projects further east. Such benches usually stand apart in the tea garden. Here it is built onto the end of the corridor.

Room, corridor, privy and bench all fit within 19 square metres. No model is recorded: unlike the Joan copy, Aoi or Katsura, Shuhinan was valued on its own terms.

A Waiting Room Named After Lord Fumai

The operator describes Shuhinan as the yoritsuki, the room where guests at a tea gathering are first shown in, settle themselves and wait for the host to fetch them.

Guests spend that time before a hanging scroll chosen for the day, the operator says, preparing for the main seat.

The name is said to honour Matsudaira Fumai, the Edo-period lord of Matsue famous as a tea master. How the connection came about is not explained.

The outer walls are earth plaster with a dado of cedar bark, which, together with the hipped roof, sets it apart from its neighbours.

Visiting Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan

Ohashi Saryo Teahouse Shuhinan stands against the south edge of the grounds. The boundary wall is recorded as doubling as the outer wall of buildings where they meet it, so from outside on the south you mainly see the wall.

The interior can be entered only by attending a tea gathering at Ohashi Saryo; when it serves as the waiting room, it is the first room guests enter.

No published photography policy was found; follow the host's instructions on the day.

Directions and general visiting conditions are on the Ohashi Saryo page.