Back Gate of the Former Matsui Family Villa (Ganko

A concrete gate with a Western arch

On the southern edge of the property, just west of the bath building, stands the back gate, built in reinforced concrete. Its opening spans 3.4 meters. A pier rises on either side, and between them a doorway 1.2 meters wide is closed by a board door. Above that doorway sits a frame topped with a keystone, and the two piers are joined by a segmental arch, a shallow curve drawn from less than a half circle. Its date falls in the late Taisho years, between 1919 and 1926.

The design is Western, but pared down. There is no ornament beyond the frame, the keystone, and the curve of the arch, and the effect is quiet rather than grand. As a concrete gate set into the southern boundary, it works with the brick bath building beside it to give this side of the estate a frankly modern character.

Why it is registered

The back gate was registered nationally in 2012 with the rest of the estate, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape. It is counted as one structure, a ki rather than a building. Its value lies in the way a small piece of boundary architecture carries the same modern, Western taste seen in the water tower and the bath building, showing how thoroughly that taste ran through the southern part of the grounds.

What to look for

The detail to find is the keystone above the doorway and the segmental arch that links the piers, a simple geometry that gives the gate its character. Standing beside the brick bath building, the concrete gate reads as part of a deliberate modern edge along the south, a counterpoint to the timber gate and tile roofs on the rest of the estate.