Former Matsui Family Villa (Ganko Rokusanen) Bathroom

A brick bath house with a concrete roof

At the southeast of the property, along the road on its southern side, stands the bath building. It covers about 17.6 square meters, built in brick with a flat roof whose slab is reinforced concrete, materials that were still new to domestic building when it went up in the late Taisho years, between 1919 and 1926. Inside are the bath and a changing room.

The exterior is composed with geometry. A parapet rises at the top of the walls, a cornice runs below it, and the face is worked with arcs and other figures that place the building squarely in the design taste of its decade. It is a small structure, but a deliberate one, where a service function was given a modern architectural face rather than left plain.

Why it is registered

Registered nationally in 2012 with the rest of the estate, the bath building was listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. Its value lies in showing how the period's modern style reached even the most private and utilitarian corners of a household. Reinforced concrete and brick, a flat roof, a geometric facade: these mark a clean break from the timber-and-tile language of the main house, and they do so on a bathroom.

What to look for

Look at the top of the walls, where the parapet and cornice give the little building a crisp, deliberate edge against the sky. The arcs worked into the facade are easy to miss and worth finding. With the brick water tower and the concrete back gate close by, the bath building belongs to a small group of modern structures set along the southern margin of the otherwise Japanese estate.