Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence

A shipping agent's house on the Kamo River

The Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence (判屋船越家住宅, Hanya Funakoshi-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant townhouse in Tenjinmachi, Yonago City, Tottori Prefecture, whose main house, west storehouse and rear gate were rebuilt over three years from 1900 and whose east storehouse dates from the late Edo period; all four were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 14, 2021. Hanya is the family's trade name, or yagō.

According to Yonago City, the Funakoshi family came to Yonago from Bizen Okayama by way of Tottori in the early Edo period. During the Kan'ei era (1624 to 1644) one of the family was asked by the Arao clan, who governed Yonago Castle for the Tottori domain, to act as head of the Tenjinmachi district, and the household ran a shipping agency for generation after generation.

The Kamo River, which runs in front of the house, once connected with the outer moat of Yonago Castle and carried goods between the harbor and the merchant quarter. The Street Museum guide supervised by Yonago City places the family's business on the river's south bank, which is exactly where the Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence still stands.

The 1900 rebuilding and the four registrations

The present buildings went up under Seitarō Funakoshi, the eleventh head of the family. The city notes that he became a member of the Tottori Prefectural Assembly in 1907 and served as head of the Yonago pier association, among other civic roles.

All four structures were registered on the same day, October 14, 2021, under consecutive numbers 31-0277 to 31-0280, and all on the criterion that they contribute to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database dates the main house, the west storehouse and the rear gate to the late Meiji period (1898 to 1912), and the east storehouse to the late Edo period (1830 to 1868). Tradition holds that the east storehouse is older than the main house.

Yonago City describes the Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence as a set of buildings that carries forward the character of Yonago's Machiya townhouses from the Edo period and shows how a high-quality merchant house was laid out.

How the Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence is laid out

The plot runs deep from north to south. The main house fronts the street on the north side. Behind it, in the middle of the property, lies a dry landscape garden in the manner of a tea garden path, with an artificial hill at the back meant to evoke Mount Hōrai, the mythical island of the immortals.

Two storehouses stand along the southern edge, both with their ridges running north to south: the east storehouse in the southeast corner and the west storehouse near the middle of the south side. Between them the rear gate faces south and marks the boundary with the land behind. The city records that the west storehouse was built south of the garden when the garden was laid out, at about the same time as the main house.

House in front, garden in the middle, storehouses and gate at the back: that sequence has survived largely as it was after the rebuilding around 1900, and it is what makes the property readable as a whole. Each building has its own page with the details.

Visiting the Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence

The Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence is a private home and the interior is not open to the public. The Street Museum guide states that only the exterior can be viewed. There is no admission fee and there are no set opening hours.

What visitors can see is mainly the street front of the main house on the Kamo River side. The storehouses and the rear gate are at the back of the property, and it has not been confirmed how much of them can be seen from public roads. Please stay on the street, keep off the doorstep and avoid pointing cameras into the house.

The house lies about 1.5 kilometers northwest of JR Yonago Station in a straight line (calculated from map coordinates), on the south bank of the Kamo River in the old castle-town district, and can be reached on foot from the station.

Names and the Hanya trade name

The official registered names are Hanya Funakoshi Family Residence Main House (omoya), East Storehouse (higashigura), West Storehouse (nishigura) and Rear Gate (uramon). Another Funakoshi family in Yonago, in Kon'yamachi, trades under the name Ōderaya; its townhouse is a different property, so the trade name and the district are the easiest way to tell the two apart.