Marui Family Residence

The Marui Family Residence in Etchumachi, Kurayoshi

The Marui Family Residence (丸井家住宅, Marui-ke Jūtaku) is a townhouse estate in Etchumachi, Kurayoshi City, Tottori Prefecture, centred on a main house built in 1916, and six of its structures were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 27, 2017: the main house, a detached wing, a storehouse, a tea house, a garden waiting arbor with its wall and sleeve fence, and a street wall.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Marui household as one of the townhouses at the centre of Kurayoshi's tea ceremony circles from the Taisho era into the early Showa years, roughly the 1910s to the 1930s. That reading runs through the whole estate. Besides the tea house and the waiting arbor, the storehouse is recorded as the place where the family kept tea utensils and hanging scrolls.

All six registered structures at the Marui Family Residence belong to a private home. The national database does not give an owner's name.

The Six Registered Structures of the Marui Family Residence

The Marui Family Residence entered the register in the 88th round, under consecutive numbers 31-232 to 31-237. The Agency's database gives these dates and structures:

• Main House (31-232): 1916. Timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 93 square meters
• Detached Wing (31-233): 1917. Timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 41 square meters
• Storehouse (31-234): 1916. Earthen-walled dozo construction, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 27 square meters
• Tea House (31-235): 1916. Timber, single storey, tiled roof
• Waiting Arbor, Wall and Sleeve Fence (31-236): around 1916. Arbor of 1.9 square meters, wall 11 meters long, bamboo sleeve fence 3.8 meters long
• Wall (31-237): around 1916. Timber, tiled, 13 meters long

The main house, the detached wing and the tea house were registered as buildings that set a model for their type. The storehouse, the waiting arbor group and the street wall were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. Read together, the dates show the core of the estate going up within two years, 1916 and 1917.

Names vary slightly between sources. The Agency lists the arbor group as "machiai with wall and sleeve fence", while Kurayoshi City's list calls the arbor a koshikake-machiai, a covered waiting bench. Both refer to the same registration.

From Street to Canal: How the Marui Family Residence Is Laid Out

The Marui Family Residence stands on a long rectangular plot running north to south, with a street along its northern edge and the Tamagawa, a narrow canal, along its southern edge. Pieced together from the Agency's descriptions, the layout reads like this.

The main house takes the northwest corner, facing the street. East of it the wall runs along the street frontage, then turns south to close off the main house's inner garden. The tea house stands east of the main house, facing south, and southeast of that, midway along the eastern boundary, are the waiting arbor and its fences. At the far end of the plot the detached wing sits at the centre of the southern edge and the storehouse in the southeast corner, both beside the canal, linked by a corridor that runs along the storehouse's north face like a lean-to roof.

The garden around the tea house and arbor takes Mount Utsubuki as borrowed scenery. The hill rises in the middle of Kurayoshi, and the city notes that a castle was built on it in the Muromachi period. Family rooms at the front, tea spaces in the middle, a storehouse for tea treasures at the back: the plan of the Marui Family Residence follows that sequence from street to water.

Visiting the Marui Family Residence

Kurayoshi City and the Kurayoshi tourism association both list the Marui Family Residence as closed inside. The tea house, the arbor, the detached wing and the storehouse are all behind the wall or deep in the plot, so what a visitor can see is the street front of the main house and the wall beside it. This is a family home; photographs of the exterior from the street are the reasonable limit, and it is polite not to linger at the door.

The southern edge of the plot meets the Tamagawa canal, but published sources do not say whether the backs of the detached wing and the storehouse can be seen from any public point along the water.

To reach the Marui Family Residence, take the city loop bus from JR Kurayoshi Station to the Fukuyoshicho stop, about 14 minutes, and walk about 6 minutes (tourism association guide). Etchumachi lies outside the Utsubuki-Tamagawa Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, the area known for its white-walled storehouses.