Totoki Villa

The Totoki Villa is one of the oldest samurai residences still in existence within the former confines of Yanagawa Castle. The omoya (main house) that was built in the late 18th century and the Buddhist altar room added in the Meiji era are both still intact, making this structure an invaluable cultural property. Maps from the Edo era reveal that the families who occupied this house included the Tomokiyos, Okas, Andos and Bekkis. 　The villa sits on a lot that measures approximately 1,100 m2. The omoya is a partial two-story hipped-roof wooden building whose roof is mostly thatched with straw, but it also has some tiles. Part of the roof is currently covered in iron plates. The L-shape of the residence is irregular, with an east-facing entrance (on the moat side) that leads to an eight-mat antechamber followed by an eight-mat south-facing sitting room. The sitting room features a storage space above the tokonoma alcove and the adjacent area, and rough-cut timbers are used for the pillars and the beams between the pillars. What’s more, there are engawa verandas on both the south and east sides of the house. These unique features cannot be seen in other samurai residences. 　The Totoki residence was located on a small outer alley at the western-most edge of the residential district of Yanagawa Castle. In the Edo era, there were small plots of land along the canal on the eastern side (where the present day canal cruises run). The residence now faces the footpath next to the canal cruise route, and the water and flora in the former castle moat together with the nearby Machiboke Monument (engraved with a poem written by Yanagawa-born Kitahara Hakushu poem), the Tsukuru Fujimura Monument (a Yanagawa-born Japanese literature professor) and the Ebina Danjo Monument (a Yanagawa-born philosopher) all make for a townscape fitting for a “City of Water.”