Yamamoto Family Retirement Home

Yamamoto Family Residence: Retirement Quarters (Inkyojo)

The first thing most people notice here is the colour. The small wall panels above the openings and the triangular gable walls are finished not in the usual white or grey but in a vivid red-earth plaster, a warm ochre that stands out against the dark timber and pale tiles. On a single-storey house otherwise quiet in its detailing, the red is a deliberate flourish.

This is the retirement quarters, or inkyojo, of the Yamamoto family of Sakai in Kainan, Wakayama Prefecture, the merchants behind Yamamoto Katsunosuke Shōten. In a traditional household the inkyojo was the separate residence to which the head of the family withdrew on stepping back from the business, handing the working house to the next generation. This one was built in 1937, on its own plot north of the inner storehouses, across a narrow lane from the rest of the compound.

A single-storey house, carefully made

The building is a timber single-storey house, five bays long and four and a half bays deep, under a hip-and-gable irimoya roof of sangawara pantiles. A gabled entrance porch projects from the south front, and tiled pent roofs run around the building to shed rain clear of the walls. The front is built in the degeta manner, with the eave purlin pushed forward on the protruding ends of the beams to give a deeper, shadowed overhang.

Inside, an L-bent central corridor turns through the plan and links four rooms, among them an eight-mat zashiki, the formal tatami room. The scale is domestic and the layout unhurried, the house of someone with the leisure to enjoy it rather than the bustle of trade. Set apart on its own plot, with the former Nokami railway line, now a walking path, running just beyond, it had air and quiet that the busy main compound did not.

Why it is registered, and what makes it valuable

The retirement quarters were listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 2 October 2007 (registration number 30-0126). Registration, introduced in 1996, is a lighter measure than designation as an Important Cultural Property, working through notification and guidance rather than strict permits, and is aimed at the wide stock of modern buildings that might otherwise be lost without record. This house qualifies for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

Its value is partly as the residential counterpoint to the rest of the compound. The main house and storehouses speak of trade and display; the retirement quarters speak of a quieter domestic life on the same property, built at the end of the founder's lifetime in 1937. The red-earth plaster gives it a character of its own within the group, and as a complete late-1930s residence kept in its setting it rounds out the picture of how the family lived.

What to look for

Pick out the red-earth plaster first, on the small panels above the lintels and on the gable walls, then the gabled porch on the south front and the deep, forward-thrown eaves of the degeta construction. Notice too that the house keeps to its own plot across the lane, a little apart from the working buildings, with the green strip of the old railway path behind it.

This is a private residence on an active business property, not a public museum. The exterior can be appreciated from the lane, but the interior is not on regular public view, so it is best to enjoy it as part of the wider streetscape and to look to nearby public spaces, such as Kameike Park, for somewhere to linger.