A Farmhouse Dated to 1854 on the Bank of the Hino River
The Main Building of the Yatagai House (矢田貝家住宅主屋, Yatagai-ke Jūtaku Shuoku, also romanised Yatagaike Jutaku Shuoku) is a landowning family's dwelling in Kamihosomi, Hōki Town, Saihaku District, Tottori Prefecture, built in 1854 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011. It occupies the right bank of the Hino River, set a little east of the centre of a walled compound, and faces east toward the road.
The measurements are recorded exactly. Eighteen metres along the ridge, twelve metres across, a footprint of 204 square metres. The frame is timber, the roof gabled and laid with pantiles, and along the south and east sides a lower secondary roof called a shitaya drops down over the veranda line.
Inside, the plan divides in half. The northern portion holds the doma, the beaten-earth working floor, together with the rooms used for daily life. The southern portion sits on a raised wooden floor and carries six rooms in two rows, the front pair kept for receiving guests. That arrangement is the standard grammar of a substantial rural house in this part of Japan, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles it out as a clear example of the Tottori regional type.
One detail gives the building an advantage over most of its contemporaries. A munafuda, the dated wooden tablet fixed inside the roof when a house is topped out, survives here and names the year. Farmhouses of this size are usually dated by inference, from joinery habits or from family papers, so a written date under the ridge is a small piece of luck for historians.
The family behind it made money twice over. Local records describe the Yatagai as a line connected with tatara ironmaking, the charcoal-fired smelting industry that shaped the mountains of western Tottori and neighbouring Shimane for centuries. They established themselves on this site during the Kaei era in the 1850s, and from the Meiji period onward they prospered as landlords and as brewers. The road running past the gate, now National Route 181, follows the course of the old Izumo Kaidō, the highway that linked the San'in coast with the inland provinces.
Registered, Not Designated: What the Label Means
Japan protects historic buildings in tiers, and the tier attached to this one is worth stating plainly. The Yatagai House is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (登録有形文化財). It is not a designated Important Cultural Property (重要文化財), and it is not a National Treasure (国宝).
Registration was introduced in 1996 as a lighter instrument. Buildings roughly fifty years old or more that are judged worth keeping go onto a national register; the owner must give notice before altering the exterior substantially, but otherwise continues to live in the building, run a business from it, or repair it as ordinary use requires. Designation as an Important Cultural Property brings far tighter controls and far heavier obligations. The register was created precisely so that houses like this one, still lived in and still earning their keep, would not fall outside the protection system altogether.
The main building carries registration number 31-0165 and was processed in the seventieth round. The criterion applied was the first of the three available: contribution to the historic landscape of the country.
Eight structures went onto the register together on 25 July 2011. Alongside the main building there are the detached wing, the tea house, the waiting arbour, the inner gate, the earthen storehouse, the row-house gate and the garden gate. Four of these are early Shōwa work, built when the family enlarged the grounds and laid out a garden in the 1920s and 1930s; the storehouse and the two outer gates date from the middle Meiji period. So the compound documents two separate campaigns of building around a late-Edo core, and the Tottori prefectural cultural properties office reads the ensemble as a country estate whose modern-era character grew up around an older farmhouse.
What Rewards a Slow Look
Begin at the street. The nagayamon, the long row-house gate, faces the main entrance across the forecourt: 7.9 metres wide, 3 metres deep, a gabled pantile roof, a 2.4-metre opening at the centre and a smaller wicket door hung on the north side. The room north of the passage is left open and fitted with a bench. The room south of it is a two-mat tatami space with an alcove. Gates of this class were built to state a family's standing, and this one has lost none of its authority.
Between the gate and the house stands a second, smaller gate. Its leaves are keyaki, Japanese zelkova, hung between a pair of vertical stiles, with the side panels in the same wood. Clapboard walls under pantiles run out left and right to join the main building on one hand and the row-house gate on the other, so that the outer forecourt is separated from the private garden behind.
Then look at the roofline of the house itself. The Agency's description calls it tsushi-nikai, which needs a word of explanation for anyone unfamiliar with the term. A tsushi upper floor is a low half-storey squeezed under the roof, its headroom too shallow to stand up in, used for storage and in some districts for raising silkworms. From outside it reads as a compressed band above the eaves rather than a proper second storey. The register's structural summary lists the building as single-storey timber construction while the descriptive text calls it tsushi-nikai; the two statements describe the same roof from different conventions.
Walk round to the north side for the storehouse. It runs 9.7 by 4.1 metres, two storeys of earthen-wall construction under a gabled pantile roof, with roofed forecourts attached on the north and east faces. Clapboard sheathing rises to waist height, plaster carries on up to the eaves and is moulded there to imitate projecting rafter ends, and on the gable end a plasterer modelled a crane in relief. It is small and high up. People walk past it constantly.
South of the house the mood changes. The detached wing joins the main building at the butsuma, the room housing the family Buddhist altar, and beyond it a stepping-stone path leads through a small waiting arbour and an inner gate to the tea house named Kanpū-an. That southern half of the compound belongs to a different world of taste, and it repays a separate visit.
Practical matters. This is a private property, not a museum, and there is no standing admission arrangement for the buildings as cultural properties. Parts of the compound have been let to businesses over the years: a soba restaurant in the early 2010s, later a Japanese restaurant, and since August 2024 a herbal tea salon working out of the old rooms. What is trading at the time decides how much of the interior a visitor can see, so a phone call before setting out saves disappointment. The compound sits directly on National Route 181 in Kamihosomi, about 1.1 kilometres from Hōki-Mizokuchi Station on the JR Hakubi Line, roughly fifteen minutes on foot. Drivers usually leave the expressway at Yonago-minami and run south on Route 181 for about ten minutes. The row-house gate and the front elevation are plainly visible from the road. For interior photography, and for the current position on access, the Lifelong Learning Section of the Hōki Town Board of Education (0859-62-0712) is the office to ask.
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Q&A
- Can the Yatagai House Main Building be visited, and is the interior open to the public?
- There is no fixed public opening. The Yatagai House is privately owned and registration as a cultural property does not oblige an owner to admit visitors. Access to the interior has depended on which business has been operating in the buildings at the time, and that has changed several times since 2011. The row-house gate and the front of the compound can be seen from National Route 181 at any hour. Confirm current arrangements with the Hōki Town Board of Education (0859-62-0712) before making a special trip.
- When was the Yatagai House Main Building built, and how is the date known?
- It was built in 1854, the seventh year of the Kaei era, near the end of the Edo period. The date comes from a munafuda, the dated tablet placed inside the roof at completion, which survives in the building. The house was repaired and extended in the early Shōwa era and repaired again in 1984 and 1988.
- Is the Yatagai House Main Building a National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property?
- Neither. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, a separate and lighter category introduced in 1996. It was placed on the register on 25 July 2011 as number 31-0165, in the seventieth round of registrations, under the criterion covering contribution to the historic landscape of the country.
- How do I reach the Yatagai House Main Building from Yonago or the Mount Daisen area?
- By train, take the JR Hakubi Line to Hōki-Mizokuchi Station; the compound is about 1.1 kilometres away on National Route 181, some fifteen minutes on foot. By car from the Yonago-minami interchange the drive south along Route 181 takes roughly ten minutes. The western foot of Mount Daisen lies within a short drive, so the house combines easily with a day in the mountains.
- What else at the Yatagai House is registered besides the main building?
- Seven further structures, all registered on the same day: the detached wing, the tea house called Kanpū-an, the waiting arbour, the inner gate, the earthen storehouse, the row-house gate and the garden gate. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 31-0165 through 31-0172.
Basic Information
| Name | Yatagai House Main Building (矢田貝家住宅主屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 486 and adjacent parcels, Aza Hinoue, Kamihosomi, Hōki Town, Saihaku District, Tottori Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building), registration no. 31-0165, seventieth round |
| Year Designated | Registered 25 July 2011 (Heisei 23) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 18 m along the ridge by 12 m across; floor area 204 m²; timber construction with a tsushi half-storey, gabled pantile roof |
| Owner | Private; no owner name is entered in the Agency for Cultural Affairs register |
| Public Access | No fixed public opening. Exterior visible from National Route 181. Interior access depends on the business operating on the site; enquire with the Hōki Town Board of Education |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Yatagai House Main Building
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008754
- Cultural Heritage Online: Yatagai House Main Building
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/195095
- Tottori Prefecture Cultural Properties Navi: Yatagai House
- https://db.pref.tottori.jp/bunkazainavi.nsf/bunkazai_web_view/117213810028FEE749257C5A00296E73
- Hōki Town official website: Registered Tangible Cultural Properties
- https://www.houki-town.jp/new1/10/20/2/5/4/01/
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Yatagai House Storehouse (registration no. 31-0169)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008758
Last verified: 2026.08.21