Yurinso

What Is Yurinso?

Yurinso (有隣荘, Yūrinsō) is a former landowning family's estate in Kuniyasu, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, built around 1923, whose main house, annex, gatehouse, storehouses and walls were registered as nine Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan on March 29, 2013.

For most of its life the estate was known simply as the Nishio residence. The Nishio family had served as ōjōya, senior village headmen overseeing a group of villages, through the Edo period. Today Yurinso belongs to Hinomaru Sohonsha Co., Ltd. and runs as a traditional restaurant, Tottori Inaba Yurinso, where guests eat in tatami rooms facing the garden.

The nine registered structures are the main house, the annex, the nagayamon gatehouse, the Second, Third and Fourth Storehouses, a partition gate with its wall, an earthen wall and a stone wall. They carry consecutive registration numbers, 31-0174 to 31-0182, and were all added to the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Property buildings on the same day for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

From the Nishio House to Yurinso

Kuniyasu grew good rice, but the Sendai River flooded it again and again, and the village moved several times over the centuries. According to the present operator, the Nishio house originally stood among the paddy fields between today's Route 53 and the river. After the great flood of 1918 the family rebuilt on higher ground at the current site.

Two generations, Nishio Masuzō and his son Yoshitaka, are said to have spent five years on the new house, bringing in shrine and temple carpenters and sending out as far as Kyoto and Osaka for furnishings. The relocation of 120 Kuniyasu households, the Nishio house among them, was completed in 1925, and a memorial stone in the hand of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō was set up the following year outside the Kamikuniyasu community hall. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates all nine registered structures to around 1923, squarely within this rebuilding.

In 1961 the estate passed to the family of Yonehara Shōzō, founder of the Hinomaru bus company and a member of the prewar House of Peers, who wrote under the name Kandō. The name Yurinso comes from a line in the Confucian Analects: virtue is never alone; it always has neighbors. The main house was renovated in the same year, 1961.

The house first opened to the public in 1985, the year Tottori hosted the National Sports Festival. The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended the nine structures for registration on September 21, 2012, which the Tottori Prefectural Board of Education reported as the 164th registration in the prefecture and the 30th in Tottori City.

How the Yurinso Estate Is Laid Out

Yurinso covers a residential lot of about 2,000 tsubo, roughly 6,600 square meters. Along the south side, which is the front, the gatehouse stands in the middle, earthen walls fold away from it on either side, and the stone wall carries the line on to the west. Pass through the gate and the porch of the main house is straight ahead. The annex, with its small tea room, is joined to the west end of the main house by a covered corridor. Tottori Prefecture describes the two buildings as set at overlapping angles, with a pond-and-stroll garden spread in front of them.

South of the annex, the partition gate and its wall turn a right angle and divide the forecourt by the entrance from the main garden in front of the reception rooms. That main garden, about 750 tsubo, borrows Mount Hassaka as its backdrop. The operator says gardeners were brought from Kyoto and took three years to finish it.

Behind the main house, the Second, Third and Fourth Storehouses stand in a row from east to west under one continuous lean-to roof along their south faces. Their red roof tiles and black-and-white namako tile walls give the back of the estate a very different character from the formal rooms at the front. Only these three storehouses are registered; no building called a First Storehouse is among the nine.

A natural route is to start outside the gate, where the stone wall, earthen walls and gatehouse line up as a single front, then walk through to the porch of the main house and look out over the garden and the annex from the rooms. The chinquapin tree beside the gate is said to be some 200 years old, and the operator says it was moved from the family's old site.

Visiting Yurinso: Access and Opening Arrangements

Yurinso operates as a restaurant, so going inside the buildings means booking a meal. The operator lists lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Bookings are for two people or more and are accepted by phone up to two days ahead, or through the online form up to five days ahead. Specific rooms cannot be requested (checked October 2, 2026).

For visitors who want to see the house without a full meal, the operator offers a Tea Time Plan: dessert and a drink with a guided look around the building, 1,200 yen per person, for 60 minutes between 2:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. It is limited to one party a day, for two or more people, booked between one week and two days in advance. Closing days are irregular, so confirm by phone (0857-53-2686).

On occasional open days the garden alone is shown free of charge; in 2026 this took place on May 9, without access to the interiors. The operator publishes no rule on photography, so ask when booking.

Yurinso is about 10 minutes by taxi from JR Tottori Station. By local bus, take the Hinomaru Bus Saji-Chizu Line for about 15 minutes to the Kuniyasu-kami stop and walk about 5 minutes. By car it is about 5 minutes from the Tottori-Minami Interchange on the Tottori Expressway, and there is parking for about 20 cars.