Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House

What the Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House is

The Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House (坂部家住宅門長屋, Sakabe-ke Jūtaku Mon-nagaya) is a late-Edo (1830–1868) gatehouse of the nagayamon type that serves as the main gate of the Sakabe estate in Fuchū, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2015.

The gate row house stands on the southern part of the estate's west side and faces west. A Nagayamon is a long building with the gate passage in the middle and rooms lined up on either side, combining an entrance and its outbuildings under one roof. This one has a hipped-and-gabled Irimoya-zukuri roof covered in Hongawarabuki tiles, with a Geya lean-to along part of the east side. Its building area is 86 m², and Wakayama Prefecture gives the frontage as 19 m.

It is a single-storey timber building whose outer walls are plastered above a band of Koshiita boarding. Part of the interior has been altered, and the building was renovated in 2006, but Wakayama Prefecture judges that the exterior keeps its traditional form well.

Why the Sakabe gate row house was registered

The Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. Both the Agency for Cultural Affairs and Wakayama Prefecture point to the part it plays in the scenery as the formal gate of an old family.

The Agency gives one more reason for calling it a rare survival. In the umabeya, the horse room to the south of the gate passage, the rail used to hold a horse in place is still there.

Gatehouses on farm estates often held stalls for cattle and horses, barns and work rooms. Once the animals were gone, those rooms tended to become storerooms, and fittings like stall rails were easily lost. The rail at the Sakabe gate is direct evidence of a time when the entrance to the house was also a working part of the farm.

What to look for at the Sakabe gate row house

The gate passage divides the Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House into a north and a south half. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the ushibeya, or cattle room, lies to the north, and the horse room and four other rooms lie to the south. Cattle on one side of the gate and horses on the other: that is the basic plan.

With a frontage of 19 m and an area of 86 m², a simple division gives a depth of about 4.5 m. It is a long, narrow building with the gate opening partway along, and its long west wall is effectively the public face of the estate.

From outside, what you can check is the west front: the way the irimoya roof folds down at both ends of the long ridge, where the gate opening falls, and how the plaster walls sit above the boarding. The horse rail is inside the umabeya and cannot be seen from outside.

Visiting the Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House

The Sakabe Family Residence Gate Row House is the main gate of the estate, but it is also the entrance to a private home, so visitors cannot pass through it. The interior, horse rail included, is not open to the public.

Because the gate faces west, you view its front from the west side. In the afternoon the sun falls on the facade, which makes the full 19 m run of wall easy to take in. Photograph only the exterior from outside the gate, and do not linger in front of it where you might be in the way of people coming and going. Directions to the estate are on the Sakabe Family Residence page.