Ishitani Residence

Chizu was a post town on the Chugoku highway, the route the Tottori lords took to Edo, and the Ishitani were its wealthiest family — timber merchants and landowners in a district that is ninety-three per cent forest. The house they rebuilt between 1919 and 1929 is the result of a decade of spending with no particular constraint: three thousand square metres of floor across forty rooms and seven storehouses, built by craftsmen using the family's own cedar.

It is a strange hybrid. The plan follows a traditional merchant house with an enormous earth-floored doma and exposed roof structure, but the detailing is Taisho — carved transoms, a heart-shaped window motif, imported glass — and there are three gardens, one of them a registered Place of Scenic Beauty. The whole thing is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property and it is open, with the post town street outside it.