Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House

What the Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House Is

The Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House (立川吉村家住宅主屋, Tachikawa Yoshimura-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a mid-Meiji merchant's house in Tachikawa-cho, Tottori City, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on July 23, 1998.

It is a 2-storey timber building under a gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) tiled roof, with a footprint of 311 square meters. Of the six Yoshimura buildings registered that day it is by far the largest, and the storehouses and gate are arranged around it.

A note in the Agency for Cultural Affairs records says the house was moved in 1936, when a road was widened, together with the utensil storehouse next to it. The technique is Hikiya: the building is jacked up and slid to a new spot instead of being taken apart. If the account is right, the house does not stand exactly where it was built.

The Main House Plan and Why It Was Registered

The plan of the Yoshimura main house runs along a central corridor (Naka-roka). Living rooms and the entrance sit on either side of it, the kitchen is attached on the north side and a study on the south. A board fence is fixed to the west side.

Family rooms, a formal entrance for guests, a working kitchen and a study all fit under one roof, which gives a fair sense of how a trading household organized its days.

The registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency singles out how visible the exterior is and calls the house a symbol of the district. The Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House earned its listing first of all for how it looks from the street.

What to Look For: Namako Walls and Plastered Eaves

Look at the upper floor first. It is finished in Namako-kabe, the black tile and raised white plaster lattice familiar from Japanese storehouses, and the treatment is limited to the 2nd storey, so the two floors read quite differently.

The underside of the eaves is also sealed in Shikkui lime plaster, with no rafters showing. Sealed eaves of this kind are generally associated with fire protection, and together with the namako panels they give the upper floor a clean white band.

Both the main ridge and the 1-ken (about 1.8 meter) pent roof below are covered in Sekishu tiles, made in the Iwami area of western Shimane and widely used across the San'in coast.

Seeing the Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House

The Tachikawa Yoshimura Family Residence Main House is private property owned by Tokuhei Co., Ltd., and no interior opening has been announced. What you can see is the exterior from the road.

Because the namako walls and plastered eaves are on the upper floor, stepping back a little and looking up gives the best view. The ground floor under the pent roof is harder to read from a distance, but please stay off the property, take photographs from the road and keep clear of the entrance.