Pre-Modern Era Japanese House
Pentax K-1 II + DFA 28-105mm F3.5-5.6
28 mm ISO 400 for 1/400 sec. at ƒ/8.0
Pentax K-1 II + DFA 28-105mm F3.5-5.6
37 mm ISO 400 for 1/200 sec. at ƒ/8.0
Preserved Pre-Modern Era Japanese House
Location: Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, Koganei, Tokyo
Timestamp: 13:06 on October 25, 2023
The Okawa House was originally built in 1925 in the residential neighborhood Den’enchofu located in the western part of Ota Ward in southern Tokyo, Japan. The house was moved approximately 23 km to its current location in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.
In my photo, you can see a wheelchair access ramp that was added after relocating the house to the museum, which is the only major modification absent from the original design.
Studying old photographs of the house and its surroundings, the museum attempted to replicate the original landscaping as well, a touch that adds authenticity to the house's historical charm. Nowadays, such landscaping is incredibly expensive due to the soaring cost of land in Tokyo.
The house is an example of Western-style architecture that was a rarity in Japan during the early 20th century. Visiting the house offered me a unique opportunity to step back in time and experience a style of housing from an era when Tokyo's land was more affordable and less congested.
The house's design was part of a 1912 development project initiated by developer Eiichi Shibusawa (渋沢 栄一), who was inspired by the "Garden City" concept proposed in England during that period.
Architect Michio Mii (三井 道男) designed the house for Sakae Okawa (大川 栄), who was a civil engineer at the Ministry of Railways.
The single-story wooden building features a central living room, surrounded by an entrance hall, dining room, bedrooms, study, and a pergola. In its early days, the house accommodated a family of five, comprising the parents, two children, and a maid.
During the Taisho Period (1912 to 1926), Japanese homes typically had multi-use rooms with concealed kitchens at the back. The Okawa House, with its innovative layout of rooms surrounding the central living space, was considered to be groundbreaking.
According to an article published by Tokyo Trip, the house deviated from the traditional housing of extended families living together with inter-generational shared sleeping arrangements, which was believed to reinforce feudal social structures where patriarchs were allowed to surveil family members.
The concept of the Okawa House was to foster a more modern, family-oriented type of housing to promote the nuclear family, to elevate a woman's role (compared to the Taisho Period), and to provide privacy—a revolutionary idea in Japan at that time.
Not only did the house survive the firebombing raids on Tokyo during WWII, it was still in use as late as 1993—nearly a decade after I arrived in Japan. I am so glad the house was not abandoned or turned into a heaping pile of refuse to make room for a parking lot!
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