Toilet at the Former Matsui Family Villa (Ganko Rokusanen)

A garden privy built in the sukiya manner

Southeast of the tea house stands the smallest of the estate's registered buildings, the privy, about 7.6 square meters. It measures 2.6 meters along the front and 2.8 meters in depth, under a gabled roof of sangawara pantile whose eaves are finished in cypress bark. Over the entrance on the north gable hangs a small canopy of cedar bark. Its date falls in the late Taisho years, between 1919 and 1926.

For so practical a building, the finish is careful. The walls are kioshu, a yellow-toned lime plaster, with a skirt in mortar, and each face carries shitaji-mado, the small latticed openings left in the plaster, cut here in several different shapes. This is sukiya work, the refined teahouse manner, applied to a privy so that it reads as a deliberate part of the garden rather than a thing to hide.

Why it is registered

Registered nationally in 2012 with the rest of the estate, the privy was listed for its part in the historic landscape. Its value is in the attitude it shows: that even the most utilitarian structure in the garden was given the attention usually reserved for a teahouse. Placed near the tea house, it helps compose the garden as a single designed space.

What to look for

The pleasure here is in the small things. Compare the shitaji-mado on each face, no two cut quite alike; note the cedar-bark canopy over the north door and the cypress-bark trim at the eaves, materials chosen for texture as much as for cover. For its size, this is one of the most finely made buildings on the grounds, and it is easy to walk past without noticing how much thought it holds.