Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House

About the Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House

The Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House (川口家住宅主屋, Kawaguchi-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber farmhouse at the centre of the Kawaguchi estate in Nishiniunozu, Aridagawa Town, Wakayama Prefecture, framed in 1915 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018.

The Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House stands toward the north of a long, narrow plot and faces south. Its gabled roof, ridge running east to west, is laid with round-edged pantiles, and a lean-to Geya wraps all four sides beneath it. The building covers 103 m²; Wakayama Prefecture gives its size as 5 ken by 5 ken, a ken being a traditional unit of about 1.8 m. The roof space above the rooms was used for storage.

A House Dated by Its Ridge Tag

The date of the Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House is not a guess. A Munafuda, the wooden tag fixed to the roof frame at the raising ceremony, records that the frame went up in 1915. The house was built when the first head of this branch of the Kawaguchi family left the main line and settled here.

That certainty is the point of the registration. The national database treats the Kawaguchi main house as a benchmark for modern Japanese-style houses in northern Wakayama, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for being a model of design. A securely dated house gives historians something to measure undated neighbours against.

Through-Passage, Six Rooms and an Open Entrance

The plan follows the usual split between a working side and a living side. The east end is a through Doma, an earth-floored passage running from front to back. The west end holds the six main rooms, arranged in two rows. Along the front, the entrance leads west into the Nakaza and then the Kamiza, the middle and upper rooms.

Look up and the difference between those two rooms is obvious. The Nakaza has an ōbiki ceiling. The Kamiza is a proper reception room, with a Tokonoma alcove, Nageshi rails along the walls and a batten-and-board ceiling.

What Wakayama Prefecture singles out is the entrance. Where most farmhouses would put sliding doors between the earthen floor and the raised floor, the Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House has none: you step straight up from the entrance doma into an open landing. The prefecture describes this as giving the house a character quite unlike an ordinary farmhouse. The kitchen area at the east end had been rebuilt about twenty years before the prefectural survey.

Seeing the Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House

The Kawaguchi Family Residence Main House is privately owned and has no public opening days. It is leased to a social welfare corporation that uses the estate for employment support, so access to the entrance landing and the Kamiza depends on that arrangement and should be checked in advance.

From outside, the house is seen from the prefectural road to the south. The low eaves of the surrounding lean-to and the big gable roof above them are the lines to look for. The reception room is joined to the west corner of the front by a corridor. Directions are on the Kawaguchi Family Residence page.