Former Yamauchi Residence, House museum and Important Cultural Property in Kōchi, Japan.
The Former Yamauchi Residence is a two-storey wooden nagaya built in 1866 within the shimoyashiki of the Yamauchi daimyō of Tosa Domain. It measures about 33 metres by 5.7 metres and has a hip-and-gable tiled roof. It served as lodging for ashigaru guards; today it is open as a museum, with a gate and a watchtower pavilion also surviving.
The nagaya was begun in 1864 and completed in 1866 as lodging for ashigaru guards of the shimoyashiki (south residence) built for Yamauchi Yōdō, 15th lord of Tosa Domain. After the Meiji era the residence was enlarged and used as the Yamauchi main house, then sold after the war; the site became Hotel Sansuien. The nagaya was transferred to Kōchi City in 1978 and designated an Important Cultural Property in 1979.
The building is a nagaya, a long row house where the ashigaru guards of the Yamauchi shimoyashiki were lodged; the nickname Satta-tei is still used for it. Inside, the ground floor keeps five rooms plus an earthen doma, and the exhibits show furniture and folk tools of the late Edo and Meiji periods, including a landscape screen by Haruki Nanmei and a flower vase of Nōchasanyaki ware.
The exhibition hall is open from 9:00 to 17:00 and closes on 26 December and 1 January; admission is free. It stands on the grounds of Hotel Sansuien, about two minutes on foot from the Kenchō-mae tram stop on the Tosa Den Tetsu Ino line. The gate and the watchtower pavilion of the former lower residence also survive nearby.
The nagaya was built to lodge the ashigaru guards of the shimoyashiki, not the daimyō himself. The gate and the watchtower (monomi-tei) also survive; at that pavilion, Yamauchi Yōdō met Saigō Takamori in February 1867. The building was transferred to Kōchi City in 1978 and designated an Important Cultural Property in 1979.
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