Ota Family Residence Gate Row House

A Gate Row House That Became a Post Office

The Ota Family Residence Gate Row House (太田家住宅門長屋) is a gate row house of about 1897 in Tomieda, Yazu Town, Tottori Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on June 28, 2017 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a single-storey timber building roofed in tile, with a building area of 49 square metres; registration number 31-0228.

Its east-end room was converted into a post office in 1915 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Gate, Rooms and a Post Office

The Ota Family Residence Gate Row House closes off the south end of the estate, with the gateway at its west end and living rooms running east of it (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Under a tiled hip-and-gable roof, the walls rise from a base of dressed stone; the lower band is finished in exposed pea gravel (Araidashi) and the upper part in white plaster (Shikkui).

The east-end room was remodelled when a post office opened in 1915 and still has its counter (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Tottori Prefecture identifies it as the Tampi post office, opened by the Ota family with the head of the house as first postmaster. The family's own account places the opening in the late Taisho era, which does not match the Agency and the prefecture.

According to the inn, most post offices of the day were Western-style buildings, while this one kept a Japanese face. The postal mark at the entrance and a counter made from a single board survive.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency notes that, although the interior was altered for the post office, the exterior keeps its original appearance; it was registered as a model of design. Tottori Prefecture credits it with marking the edge of the estate and pulling the street scene together.

What to Look For

From the road, read the walls from the ground up: dressed stone base, pebbled lower band, white plaster above. The gateway at the west end and the door of the old post office at the east end can both be picked out from outside.

In the garden on the gate side grows a tarayo holly, whose leaves keep a dark mark where they are scratched and which is said to have given Japanese its word for postcard; the inn calls it the post office tree (Ota-tei).

Visiting

Because the Gate Row House fronts the prefectural road, its exterior can be seen from the street. The former post office room is now Café Hitotsuyama, lined with books that include picture books of a local folk tale about the fox of Hitotsuyama (Ota-tei). The website gives no opening days or hours for the café.

No official guidance on photography was found.