Kanpū-an: Two Tea Rooms Sharing One Mizuya
The Tea House of the Yatagai Residence (矢田貝家住宅茶室, Yatagai-ke Jūtaku Chashitsu), known by the poetic name Kanpū-an (観楓庵), stands in the garden of the Yatagai family compound at Kamihosomi, Hōki Town, Saihaku District, Tottori Prefecture. It was built in the early Shōwa era and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011. The name translates roughly as "hut for viewing the maples", and the family clearly meant the building to be used in autumn.
It is small. The register puts it at 6.4 metres along the ridge and 3.6 metres across, with a registered building area of 18 square metres, single storey, under a hipped roof clad in sheet metal. Along the south and east faces runs a doorless earthen canopy, a tsuchibisashi, sheltering the approach. Sheet metal is not the roofing one expects on a tea house, where thatch or shingle is the convention, but this is snow country at the western foot of Mount Daisen, and a light metal skin sheds a winter load that would crush a thatched roof of this size.
The interior arrangement is what makes the building worth describing at length. Rather than the usual single tea room with a service pantry tucked to one side, Kanpū-an holds two tea rooms set east and west, with a mizuya, the preparation room where utensils are washed and laid out, running between them at a width of about half a ken, roughly ninety centimetres. One room measures two mats. The other measures four and a half.
Those two figures carry meaning in the vocabulary of tea. Four and a half mats is the classic room, the size associated with the sixteenth-century codification of the practice and still treated as the baseline against which everything else is judged. Two mats is at the extreme small end, close to the compression of Tai-an, the National Treasure tea room in Yamazaki. Building both, back to back, off a shared pantry, gave the household a choice of register for the same afternoon: an intimate sitting for one or two guests, or something more relaxed and sociable.
Rustic Timber and the Reason for Registration
The tea house is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (登録有形文化財), which is a different and lighter category than designation as an Important Cultural Property (重要文化財) and different again from National Treasure (国宝) status. Registration, introduced in 1996, covers buildings of roughly fifty years or older that are judged worth keeping. Owners give notice before major alterations to the exterior and otherwise carry on using the building. The tea house carries registration number 31-0167 and went onto the register in the seventieth round, under the criterion covering contribution to the historic landscape of the country.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs record singles out one feature in particular: the use of kawatsuki-zai, timber left with its bark on, in the decorative members around the toko alcove. That choice places the building squarely in the sukiya tradition, where a piece of wood is valued for how little has been done to it. A stripped and planed post shows craft; a post that keeps its bark shows judgement about when to stop. The register calls the result yashu, a word for the flavour of the wild brought indoors, and describes the overall form as a distinctive one.
Set that against the date and the setting, and the interest sharpens. This is a country family in a snowbound valley in Tottori, in the 1920s or 1930s, commissioning a two-room tea house with a shared pantry and rustic alcove timbers. The Yatagai had grown wealthy through landholding and brewing after the Meiji Restoration, and around the same period they enlarged the grounds and laid out a garden. Kanpū-an belongs to that campaign. The house they were building around was already seventy or eighty years old by then, a working farmhouse of 1854, and the contrast between the two is the point of the compound.
The tea house was repaired in 1988, which accounts for the present condition of the roof and the exterior finishes.
The Path That Leads There
A tea house is only half the experience; the walk to it is the other half. At the Yatagai compound the roji, the dewy path, survives complete, and three of its elements are registered in their own right.
The sequence begins at the detached wing, the hanare, which joins the south side of the main house at the butsuma. The hanare itself contains a tea room of four and a half mats plus a daime, the three-quarter mat that shortens the host's side, with an earthen canopy across its front and an open, unfussy character. Guests would have gathered there.
From the hanare the path crosses the garden. Partway along stands the chūmon, the inner gate, only 1.2 metres wide, timber under a sheet-metal roof, its rafters left as round logs and its door faced with ajiro, woven bamboo or cedar strip. The gate marks the boundary between the main garden and the roji proper. Passing through it is the moment a guest steps out of the household's ordinary world.
Just beyond, facing east, sits the koshikake-machiai, the waiting arbour: 2.5 metres by 1.2 metres, a gabled roof of copper sheet, lean-to extensions on the south and west housing a setchin privy, and an earthen canopy over the eastern front. Some of the posts are logs with the bark left on, and the purlins and rafters are round timber as well. Guests sit here until the host signals. The building is barely larger than a garden bench with a roof, and it is registered as a cultural property.
Then the last stretch of path, and Kanpū-an at the end of it. Sit under the tsuchibisashi on the south side and the garden reads as it was meant to read, framed low and close.
Practical matters, stated plainly. The Yatagai residence is privately owned and is not a museum. There is no standing public opening for the tea house, and the tea buildings sit deep in the garden behind the main house, well out of sight of the road. Parts of the compound have been let to businesses over the years, most recently a herbal tea salon that opened in August 2024, and access to the garden and the buildings has depended on what has been trading. Photography inside should be cleared with whoever is operating on the day. The compound stands on National Route 181 in Kamihosomi, about 1.1 kilometres from Hōki-Mizokuchi Station on the JR Hakubi Line, some fifteen minutes on foot, or about ten minutes by car south from the Yonago-minami interchange. For the current position on access to the tea house and the roji, ask the Lifelong Learning Section of the Hōki Town Board of Education on 0859-62-0712.
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Q&A
- Can the Yatagai House Tea House, Kanpū-an, be visited or entered?
- There is no fixed public opening. The Yatagai residence is private, and registration as a cultural property carries no obligation to admit visitors. The tea house stands in the garden behind the main building and is not visible from the road. Access has depended on which business has been operating in the compound. Enquire with the Hōki Town Board of Education (0859-62-0712) before making a special journey.
- Why is the Yatagai House Tea House called Kanpū-an, and what does the name mean?
- Kanpū-an (観楓庵) combines the characters for viewing, maple and hermitage, so the name points to a retreat for enjoying autumn foliage. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record and the Tottori prefectural cultural properties database both give this as the building's name.
- How large is the Yatagai House Tea House, and how are its rooms arranged?
- The register records 6.4 metres along the ridge, 3.6 metres across, and a building area of 18 square metres, single storey under a hipped sheet-metal roof. Inside there are two tea rooms, one of two mats and one of four and a half, placed east and west of a mizuya preparation room roughly half a ken wide that runs between them.
- When was the Yatagai House Tea House built, and what is its cultural property status?
- It dates from the early Shōwa era, so the 1920s or 1930s, and was repaired in 1988. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, number 31-0167, entered on the register on 25 July 2011 in the seventieth round. It is not an Important Cultural Property and not a National Treasure.
- What else in the garden of the Yatagai residence is registered alongside the tea house?
- The detached wing, which contains its own four-and-a-half-mat tea room with a daime, the waiting arbour on the roji, and the inner gate dividing the main garden from the tea path. All three were registered on the same day as the tea house, as part of a group of eight structures numbered 31-0165 through 31-0172.
Basic Information
| Name | Yatagai House Tea House, known as Kanpū-an (矢田貝家住宅茶室・観楓庵) |
|---|---|
| Location | 486 and adjacent parcels, Aza Hinoue, Kamihosomi, Hōki Town, Saihaku District, Tottori Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building), registration no. 31-0167, seventieth round |
| Year Designated | Registered 25 July 2011 (Heisei 23); built early Shōwa era, repaired 1988 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 6.4 m along the ridge by 3.6 m across; building area 18 m²; single-storey timber construction, hipped roof clad in sheet metal |
| Owner | Private; no owner name is entered in the Agency for Cultural Affairs register |
| Public Access | No fixed public opening. The building stands in the garden behind the main house and is not visible from the road; enquire with the Hōki Town Board of Education |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Yatagai House Tea House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008756
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Yatagai House Waiting Arbour
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008757
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Yatagai House Detached Wing
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00008755
- Cultural Heritage Online: Yatagai House Waiting Arbour
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/184258
- 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/
Last verified: 2026.08.21