Former Hotta Kojoen Main House

What the Former Hotta Kojoen Main House Is

The Former Hotta Kojoen Main House (旧堀田古城園主屋, Kyū-Hotta Kojōen Omoya) is a single-storey timber building completed in 1933 in Ote, Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 4, 2021.

It was the core of Hotta Kojoen, a ryotei restaurant that also took overnight guests. Diners arrived through its entrance and ate in its tatami reception rooms. Under a hipped roof of pantiles, the building covers 179 square metres, the largest footprint of the six registered structures on the lot.

The national database opens its description by noting that the house stands inside the protected area of the Takeda Clan Residence Site in northern Kofu. The building itself has nothing to do with the sixteenth-century warlords; it earns its listing as early Showa restaurant architecture.

Why It Was Registered

The Former Hotta Kojoen Main House was registered under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a fine example of modern Japanese-style architecture.

Read the floor plan and you can follow a guest's evening. Rooms flank the entrance hall. Across a corridor lies a pair of connected rooms with a household Shinto altar shelf. The main reception rooms turn a corner in an L, and a separate banquet room pushes out to the south. The plan is a route, drawn to lead visitors from the door to the best seats in the house.

The exterior tells the same story. On the garden side the walls give way almost entirely to glazed sliding doors set under unusually tall eaves, so the rooms open onto the view. For a restaurant of the early Showa era, the garden was part of the meal.

The architects who restored the building add a local point: Kofu lost much of its housing in wartime bombing, and prewar domestic buildings like this one are now scarce in the city.

What to Look For

By the time the Former Hotta Kojoen Main House was donated to Kofu City, its outer walls had been smothered in mortar. Working from old photographs and physical traces, the restorers stripped that back to Shinkabe construction, with the timber posts showing on the face of the wall. A two-storey wing attached at the northeast corner was judged to be a later addition and removed, and the wall behind it was rebuilt from evidence and comparable buildings.

Stand in the garden and look at the south front. The long run of glazed doors plays against the low, level line of the eaves, and the architects have published night views of this side lit from within.

Inside, much of the early Showa finish survives. Sliding doors off the entrance are papered in multicoloured printed sarasa, a paper that can no longer be matched, so missing patches were filled with other stock and the originals kept in use. The Tokonoma of the room now used for lectures has a kujaku-kabe, or peacock wall, a speckled sand plaster; restorers scraped it off, washed the material and reapplied it.

Along the veranda, glazed doors combine ground glass, frost-patterned glass and clear panes in a fine grid, a pattern typical of the period. The earthen floor and the original shoe cupboard in the entrance hall were checked and kept as found, and the architects note that rare kinkarakawakami, embossed and lacquered wallpaper, was reused as well.

Visiting the Main House

The exterior of the Former Hotta Kojoen Main House can be viewed from the garden whenever the museum is open. To go inside, apply at the museum information desk for an entry permit; interior visits are limited to 1 hour.

Because the house is used for lectures and workshops, some rooms may be closed while an event is running. If you have your heart set on the interior, mention it when booking ahead.

Directions, opening days and fees for the whole site are gathered on the Former Hotta Kojoen page.