Jun 09, 2019 11:55:00

A plan to completely relocate a 300-year-old old house over the sea to the United States

Plans are underway to relocate the 320-year-old traditional house in Marugame, Kagawa Prefecture, over the war of World War II, to the state of California in the United States. How is the plan of 'a house going over the sea' in progress, it is close to the whole thing that seems to be reckless as the online media

Atlas Obscura .

How Do You Move a 320-Year-Old House Across an Ocean?-Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-house-moving-huntington-library-california

The plan to be relocated to the Huntington Library owned by the Huntington Foundation in California is Yokoi's residence in Imazu, Marugame. In a land area of Yokoi House is about 1,180 square meters, old is a Murayakunin of the Edo era village headman was belongings.

Huntington Library

During the Edo period, many villagers left the village where the warriors were born and moved to Edo and Osaka, and Muramasa was entrusted to the hands of Ashiya. Ashiya, who ruled the village, kept records on agriculture records, local history, births, etc., and kept records strictly as village archives.

According to this Ashiya record, Yokoi House was originally owned by Ashiya and was built by the 7th generation of the Yokoi family, who died in 1713. A Japanese house composed of pillars, beams, shoji, bran and tiled roofs has been preserved for almost 300 years with almost no change in its appearance.

Akira Yokoi and Yokoi Yokoi of the 19th generation donated this house to the Huntington Foundation in 2016. According to Robert Hori, a curator and program director at the Huntington Foundation, Yokoi's ancestors are warriors who put themselves in battle under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Later, Yokoi-san's ancestors lost the status of warriors and became commoners, but because of their position as former warriors, they were able to receive better education than others. As a result, Yokoi's ancestors will be in charge of record keeping as Ashiya, and a legacy that allows the Huntington Library visitors to know about Japanese culture has been left in their homes.

It is not easy for houses with old history to cross the sea. First of all, because of the wooden house, there was a possibility that it could not be relocated if there was damage by rot and termites. In addition, the approval of the relevant local government and the Japanese government was necessary to carry out the relocation, and it was unclear whether it could be rebuilt according to the American building standard when rebuilt the house once dismantled in California. In order for the Huntington Foundation to make all these decisions, it took an entire two-year study and negotiation time.

The plan to transfer a house is to move to the implementation phase only after clearing many issues. In early 2019, the entire building was demolished and all the wood was carefully disassembled and labeled.

In addition, large drawings were created so that the house could be correctly rebuilt.

As of May 2019, working teams are sorting pillars and beams in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture. Wood is cleaned manually one by one, but replicas will be created for those that can not be reused. As with the restoration of old paintings, these tasks are done carefully to prevent the loss of oldness, says Hori. The overall timber restoration work is expected to be completed by 2019.

Once the restoration work is complete, the beams and columns will be shipped by ship to the Huntington Library, which will be rebuilt by a dedicated team of California. In addition, the storehouse will be relocated together with the house, and the Huntington Foundation will reproduce the Japanese garden surrounding the house and the surroundings. Note that this is a replica, as the original gatehouse does not already exist. Yokoi House, which was relocated, will be released from the fall of 2020 to the beginning of 2021, if it goes well.