Sasano Family Residence Main House

About the Sasano Family Residence Main House

The Sasano Family Residence Main House (笹野家住宅主屋, Sasano-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a 2-story wooden house built in the early Shōwa period (1926 to 1945) in the Shinmachi district of Sono, Gobo City, Wakayama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018.

It stands in the middle of the plot facing north, with a building area of 282 square meters under a roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles. The Wakayama Prefectural Board of Education says it was built new when the family laid out the estate, a project said to have taken about 5 years starting at the end of the Taishō era. It is the largest of the four registered Sasano buildings.

The plan opens with the entrance on the north side. A reception room sits just to the right of the entrance, and two Zashiki tatami rooms line the south side. Upstairs there are two more zashiki and a Chashitsu tea room.

Why the Sasano Family Residence Main House was registered

The Sasano Main House was registered as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as an early Shōwa house that stays Japanese in style while drawing on modern methods throughout.

The agency names three of them: a skilful arrangement of corridors, Western-style detailing in the reception room, and, in an upstairs zashiki, a Tokowaki shelf recess that turns the corner in an L-shape. The prefectural board calls this upstairs alcove arrangement unconventional, and adds that apart from the kitchen and a few other areas the house has seen little alteration.

The corridors may need a word of explanation. In many older Japanese houses you reached an inner room by passing through the rooms in front of it. Linking rooms with corridors, so that each could be entered on its own, was an idea that spread through Japanese houses in the modern period, and the plan of the Sasano Family Residence Main House seems to have been valued in that light.

What to look for in the Sasano Main House

Since the house is not open, its highlights come to us through the descriptions of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the prefecture.

The first is the reception room by the entrance. A single Western-style room is placed exactly where a guest would be shown first, while the rest of the house stays Japanese. Well-to-do households of the early Shōwa period often built this way, folding one room for visitors into a Japanese home.

The second is the upstairs alcove. A Tokonoma and its tokowaki normally sit side by side on one wall. Here the arrangement bends around a corner and spans two walls, which would have caught the eye of anyone stepping into the room.

The roofs differ too. The Sasano Family Residence Main House is covered in light pantiles, while the detached room and the storehouse on the same plot carry heavier hongawara tiling of alternating flat and round tiles.

Visiting the Sasano Family Residence Main House

The Sasano Family Residence Main House is a private home and the interior is not open. It stands in the middle of the plot, with the storehouse, gate and wall between it and the street, so expect to see little of it from the road.

Please do not go through the gate, and keep photographs to the exterior from the street. Directions to the estate are on the Sasano Family Residence (Gobo) page.