Hagiwara Family Residence (Former Oki Family Residence) Oshian Setchin

What Is the Oshian Setchin?

The Hagiwara Family Residence (Former Oki Family Residence) Oshian Setchin (萩原家住宅（旧大木家住宅）翁姿庵雪隠) is a late Meiji-period (1898–1912) tea-garden privy on a residential lot in Yumura, Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2025.

Read Hagiwara-ke jūtaku (kyū Ōki-ke jūtaku) Ōshi-an setchin. Setchin is an old word for a toilet, and in the tea ceremony it refers to the privy that accompanies a teahouse. The Oshian Setchin stands north of the teahouse and faces south. With a building area of just 4.1 m², it is a very small building for a registered property.

Younger Than Its Teahouse

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the setchin to the late Meiji period, later than the late Edo-period teahouse; in construction date, the privy is about half a century younger. It was relocated together with the teahouse in 1948 and 1991.

The setchin is a single-story timber building with a Yosemune-zukuri hipped roof running east to west. Like the teahouse, its roof is Kayabuki thatch under temporary steel sheeting. Matching the teahouse's thatched hipped roof makes even this tiny building part of the tea-garden scene.

Marble Floor, Blue-and-White Porcelain and Fanned Rafters

Inside, the setchin is divided into two compartments, east and west. The western one has a wooden floor with a toilet, and the eastern one has a marble-paved earthen floor with a urinal. The Agency's photo caption identifies the urinal as sometsuke, porcelain decorated in underglaze blue.

There is no ceiling, so looking up you see the Taruki rafters spread out like the ribs of a fan. Marble paving, blue-and-white porcelain and fanned rafters in a hut of 4.1 m² led the Agency to call it small but finely made.

Like the teahouse, the Hagiwara Family Residence (Former Oki Family Residence) Oshian Setchin was registered under the criterion of serving as a model of form and design. That the teahouse and its privy survive and were registered together adds to their significance.

Visiting the Oshian Setchin

The Oshian Setchin stands on private residential land and is not open to the public. There are no viewing days or fees, and the property cannot be entered (checked October 2026).

A photograph of the exterior from the west and one of the porcelain urinal are published in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database and on Cultural Heritage Online. Please do not approach the house to visit or take photographs.