Yurinso Main House

What Is the Yurinso Main House?

The Yurinso Main House (有隣荘主屋, Yūrinsō Shuoku) is a single-story wooden residence at the center of the Yurinso estate in Kuniyasu, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, built around 1923 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2013.

It was the principal dwelling the Nishio family, former senior village headmen, built when they moved their household away from the flood-prone fields of the Sendai River. The building covers 380 square meters. It was renovated in 1961, the year the estate passed to the Yonehara family, and its rooms are now used for dining by the restaurant Tottori Inaba Yurinso.

Why the Yurinso Main House Was Registered

The Yurinso Main House was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property with eight other structures on the estate, as number 31-0174, the first of the nine, for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a large modern house in the Japanese manner, marked by its red roof tiles and the namako tilework along the base of its walls. The Tottori Prefectural Board of Education adds that the house keeps a floor plan traditional to the region and that the rooms facing the garden carry restrained, high-quality Zashiki-kazari, the alcove and shelving that formal Japanese rooms use for display. In other words, it is a headman family's status rebuilt with the craft and materials of the Taishō period.

What to Look for at the Yurinso Main House

Red tiles and patterned walls

The Yurinso Main House faces south in the middle of the lot. A large Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof, laid with interlocking Sangawara-buki tiles, is ringed by lower lean-to eaves, the Geya. The tiles have a reddish tone, and the lower walls are faced with Namako-kabe, square tiles set in raised white plaster. If you are used to grey roofs and white walls on Japanese houses, the color is the first surprise, and you see it best on the front elevation as you come through the gatehouse.

Porch, corner room and annex

A porch with its own small hip-and-gable roof projects from the center of the facade, so two gables, one large and one small, stack above each other. Toward the west a covered corridor leads to the annex, and on the west side a corner reception room, the kado-zashiki, juts out. Because the plan reaches out in three directions instead of sitting as a simple rectangle, the roof lines overlap one behind another when you look back from the garden.

Rooms that face the garden

The reception rooms line the garden side behind a veranda. One of them, the Kandō Room shown in the prefecture's report, takes its name from Kandō, the pen name of Yonehara Shōzō; the operator describes it as a 10-mat room from the Taishō period. Sitting with the alcove behind you and the garden and Mount Hassaka in front, you understand that the Yurinso Main House was arranged around the view.

Visiting the Yurinso Main House

The interior of the Yurinso Main House can be seen by booking a meal or the Tea Time Plan, which puts you in one of its rooms. Rooms cannot be requested, so you will not know which one you get until you arrive (checked October 2, 2026). The front is visible from the forecourt inside the gatehouse, and the garden side from the veranda.

The operator publishes no rule on photography, so ask when booking or on arrival, especially if other diners are nearby. Directions and booking conditions are on the Yurinso page.