Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate

What the Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate Is

The Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate (櫻林家住宅長屋門, Sakurabayashi-ke Jūtaku Nagayamon) is a single-storey timber gatehouse built in 1905 in Miyaharacho, Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 7 August 2023 (registration no. 19-0171). It stands on the south edge of the homestead of the Sakurabayashi, a family of physicians since the Edo period, and forms the front of the property.

A Nagayamon is a gate built into a long, narrow row building, with rooms on either side of the passage. In the Edo period they were typical of samurai residences and of leading farming families, and the side rooms housed servants, tools or workshops.

Here the roof is a hip-and-gable (irimoya) form in sangawara pantiles, set Hirairi, with the long side facing the road. The passage is not centred but pushed toward the east, and a wing projects to the north, giving the building a T-shaped plan. The building area is 94 square metres, and the gatehouse was renovated in 2002.

Why It Was Registered

The Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate was listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The national database credits it with giving the house a frontage of real presence.

What sets it apart from most gatehouses of its type is how the side rooms were used. East of the passage is a single room that originally housed the rickshaw man. West of it are three rooms that served as the doctor's consulting rooms. For patients, the gate itself was the clinic.

A rickshaw puller lodged beside the gate hints at a time when the doctor went out on house calls by rickshaw. Patients were seen on one side of the passage while the transport for home visits waited on the other. It is a Meiji-era medical family adapting an Edo-period building type to the needs of its practice.

What to Look For

Start with the gate doors. Their central panels are each a single board of keyaki (Japanese zelkova), with no joins, so the bold grain of the wood runs uninterrupted across the whole face. The Council for Cultural Affairs picked out these doors as part of what gives the Sakurabayashi compound the dignified front of a doctor's house.

Then look at where the passage falls. Because it sits toward the east rather than in the middle, the rooms on either side are unequal: one room to the east, three to the west. That internal division shows up directly as an asymmetry in the facade.

The T-shaped plan is harder to read from the road. The projecting wing points north into the property, so from outside the Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate presents itself as a long, low irimoya roof stretched across the south side of the lot.

Visiting the Gatehouse

The Sakurabayashi Family Residence Nagayamon Gate belongs to a private home. Its rooms are not open, and visitors may not pass through the gate into the grounds.

Of the five registered Sakurabayashi buildings, this is the one most easily seen from outside, since it stands on the south boundary. There is no published policy on photography; if you look or take pictures from the road, do not block the gateway. The location of the property is covered on the Sakurabayashi Family Residence page.