Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate

What Is the Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate?

The Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate (宇藤家住宅長屋門, also written Utō) is a Taisho-period gatehouse of the nagayamon type in Hoshiya, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on January 8, 2009 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records the Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate as a single-storey timber building with a tile roof and a building area of 80 square metres. It dates from the Taisho period; the year column of the database gives 1912 to 1925.

A Gate 20 Metres Long

The Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate stands on the south side of the plot. It is long and narrow, 20 metres along the ridge and 3.6 metres deep (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The ridge runs east to west; the west end is finished with a hip-and-gable roof, and the east end joins the barn.

The gateway is near the middle and is 3.7 metres wide, with double doors and a small side door. East of the gateway was a board-floored storeroom; to the west were living rooms and other spaces (Agency for Cultural Affairs). A nagayamon is a gate, a store and a dwelling in one.

Wakayama Prefecture describes it as a very long building of nearly 20 metres.

Why It Was Registered

The Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2009 under the criterion for structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Closing the front of a farmstead with one long building and opening only its centre was a way of showing the standing of the household to the road. Here the gatehouse meets the barn at a right angle, and it forms the south side of what the Agency calls a solid, continuous farmstead front.

What to Look For

The outer wall of the Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate is clad high up in vertical boards (tateita-bari), with white plaster above (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The dark boards take up most of the wall, and a white band runs under the eaves.

In a wall 20 metres long, only the 3.7-metre gateway opens. The small door beside the double doors shows how daily comings and goings were kept apart from the occasions when the gate stood open. At the west end the roof turns into a hip-and-gable; at the east end it runs into the roof of the barn.

Visiting

The Uto Family Residence Nagayamon Gate belongs to a private home, and no information on public opening was found. Because it stands on the south boundary, its outer face can be seen from the road on the south. Please do not go through the gate, and photograph with care.

Directions from Hoshiya Station and the layout of the whole compound are on the Uto Family Residence page.