Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House

What the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House is

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House (尾崎林太郎家住宅主屋, Ozaki Rintarō-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a 2-storey wooden townhouse of the mid-Taisho era in Kuroe, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 12, 2001. It stands at the center of the property of the Ozaki, a family of lacquerware wholesalers, and holds both the shop and the family's living quarters under one roof.

The roof is in the hip-and-gable form, covered in pantiles, and the building area is 131 square meters. The house faces east. In front of it stands the three-story storehouse, and beyond that, on the road, the gatehouse. The mid-Edo reception wing is joined to the west side at the back.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the main house to the middle of the Taisho era and gives a broad range of 1912 to 1925. The reception wing was linked to it during a rebuilding of the property in the same period, so the main house appears to have been the centerpiece of that work.

Why the main house was registered

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House was registered as a building that has become a model of its type. The Agency points to three things: an interior divided into a shop and living quarters, careful construction in fine timber, and dignified detailing, above all the lacquered coffered ceiling in the entrance.

Shop in front, home behind, all in one building: that much is standard for a Japanese townhouse. What lifts this one is the quality of the materials and the finish, fitting for a family that had served as village headmen in the Edo period and that received guests as well as customers.

The lacquered ceiling and the hip-and-gable roof

The feature to look for in the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House is the entrance ceiling. It is a coffered ceiling, with ribs set in a grid and boards fitted between them, finished in lacquer. For a lacquerware merchant, a lacquered ceiling in the entrance hall was a way of showing visitors the quality of the trade the moment they stepped inside. The published descriptions do not specify which parts, ribs or panels, carry the lacquer.

From outside, the 2-storey height and the broad hip-and-gable roof make the main house the anchor of the whole property. Photographs on Cultural Heritage Online show the upper floor clad in vertical boards, and a row of doorways on the ground floor with a small roof projecting over the entrance.

Where the shop ended and the living rooms began, and how many rooms there are, is not set out in the published descriptions.

Seeing the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House

No information on interior visits to the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House could be found. The lacquered ceiling is indoors and cannot be seen from outside.

The main house sits in the middle of the plot, with the gatehouse and the three-story storehouse between it and the road to the east, and how much of it can be seen from the road has not been confirmed. Stay outside the gate and off the grounds. Directions are on the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence page.