Tsuwano’s Tangible Cultural Property: Traditional House of Hashimoto Family

A sake brewery from the Kyouhou period (1716-1736) that continued business until recently. The building is from early Meiji period (1868-1912) with a front gate on the main Honmachi street. On the main street there is only one more mansion remaining with a main gate, the Traditional House of Zaima Family

The shop is a wooden 2 storey structure with a tile roof, with kirizuma style.

The style of the roof is called kirizuma-zukuri with pantile roof tiles and a smaller roof attached along the facade of the building. The first floor has a big white facade and three mushi-ko-mado style windows. On both side one can see sode-udatsu, which are small walls jotting out of the surface, to prevent the spreading of fire from the neighbouring buildings.

An inner garden named “Suiunen” (meaning) is facing the formal Japanese tatami room, with borrowed scenery of Mt. Aono. The painted old sugi wooden doors from the domain lord’s palace are still preserved on the premises. 

An interesting feature of the Hashimoto brewery is the small fixed part of the door (seen on the left side of the following photo).

The name of 座頭さぐり (ざとうさぐり – ZatouSaguri) seems to be only used in Tsuwano, but this architecture element is widely used across Japan. The small fixed partition of the door is there to make the door lighter and cheaper. Building big sliding doors both take resources (extra timber) and also makes it difficult to open and shot the door. In Tsuwano it has a special name, which can be directly translated into “blind man’s plank”. It is said to guide the hands of blind patrons of a given shop, but most probably it is only a naming, rather than an explanation of the function it serves.

Back to 

⑩橋本本店

享保年間から続く造り酒屋で、明治初期の建築。店舗と道具蔵の間に来客用の本門を有する。本町通りで本門を持つのは財間家と橋本家のみである。

店舗は木造瓦葺二階建で、切妻造。正面に下屋庇を付け、上部に袖ウダツや虫龍窓、格子を構える。座敷に面して「翠雲園」と命名した中庭を有し、青野山を借景とする。

津和野町伝統文化活性化協議会、平成２４年３月発行