The first pre-event for the 47th National Conference in Tokyo: East-West exchange in pioneering Osaka and Kyoto over the revitalization of nagaya (row houses) and alleys
Updated: Nov 12
On Saturday, May 25th, the 2024 (Reiwa 6) Japanese Association for Historic Conservation general meeting was held in Osaka, and a seminar "Considering the nagaya (row houses) of Osaka and Tokyo" was also held. The next day, we moved to Kyoto. After visiting Momiji-no-koji and Akebiwa-roji, a townhouse regeneration project that the Kyoto Machiya Regeneration Research Group has been working on, we held a seminar "Regeneration of Alleys in the Case of Kyoto". Both were held as pre-events for the 47th National Conference to be held in Kyojima, Tokyo on October 26th and 27th. The regeneration of nagaya houes that is being undertaken in Kyojima, the venue of the Tokyo conference, is an issue that has not been addressed head-on in previous national conference. Osaka is one step ahead in its nagaya regeneration. In order to make the actual national conferenece more fruitful, we held a pre-event exchange on the theme of nagaya regeneration and considered why nagaya houses is important now.
The venue for Osaka was the Osaka Municipal Housing Information Center, which houses the "The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living (Osaka Kurashi no Konjakukan)." The Museum is a popular known for its life-sized reproductions of Osaka's Edo period streets.
At the seminar, Professor Emeritus Tani Naoki of Osaka Municipal University, who was involved in the establishment of the Konjakukan Museum from the beginning and served as its first director, gave a lecture titled "The Establishment and Characteristics of Osaka's Nagaya." Next, Director Goto Daiki of the Yatsu-shima-hana Cultural Foundation gave a presentation titled "The Establishment and Succession of Tokyo's Nagaya: Using Sumida Kyojima as a case," in which the revitalization of eastern and western Nagaya came together for the first time. Professor Tani gave a detailed lecture on the history of Osaka, where nagaya stands out, as well as the activities that Osaka City University has been working on to revitalize and utilize nagaya houses.
*Summaries of Professor Tani and Goto's lectures can be found on Nakao Yoshitaka's Facebook page:
After the lecture, Professor Emeritus Tani Naoki of Osaka Municipal University (left) and Director of the Yashima Hana Cultural Foundation Daiki Goto (right) answered questions.
Prior to the seminar, we walked around Nakazakii-cho, where stylish shops are dotted around renovated nagaya houses, and visited the Konjakukan Museum. We gathered on the first floor of the Housing Information Center at 10:30 and headed to Nakazaki-cho accompanied by Ms.Tsunamoto Koto. On the way from the center to Nakazaki, we saw rows of townhouses (= omote-nagaya) one after another. It really made us realize that Osaka is a town of nagaya houses. Nakazaki is located a 10-minute walk from Umeda Station, the core of Osaka and on this day, people with smartphones in hand were gathering at the shops here and there.
Nakazaki-cho, a mix of nagaya houses and high-rise apartment buildings
We were guided around the Konjakukan museum by director Masaya Masui, professor emeritus at Kyoto University and Nara Women's University. The town recreated at the museum includes two nagaya houses, a front nagaya and a back nagaya. Each storefront of the houses has gorgeous summer festival decorations, such as treasure ships and lions. The displays change with the seasons, and I would like to come back to see the lovingly-loved exhibits.
According to Professor Tani, Osaka was known as a merchant town, but in the Edo period, home-owning merchants were only a few percent of the population, and the majority were renters, and nagaya houses were their homes. This tradition has been carried on into modern times, and a large number of nagaya houses were built in the expanding urban areas during the Meiji, Taisho, and prewar Showa periods. Around this time, building restrictions on nagaya houses began, and a certain level of quality was ensured even for back nagaya houses facing alleys. Some very impressive nagaya houses began to be built. Since 2005, Osaka City University has been working with students on preserving and renovating the Toyosaki Nagaya, including making it earthquake-resistant. The group of row houses were relocated and renovated from Kitano Sato-cho (around present-day Umeda) along with their owners' main houses between 1921 and 1922.
*The Toyosaki Nagaya homes are not usually open to the public. You can learn about the full project in the following book, which is full of wonderful photos and drawings:
Tani Naoki and Takehara Yoshiji (eds.), Living Nagaya Houses: Building an Osaka City University Model, 2013, Osaka Municipal University Joint Press
Around the same time, in Tokyo, after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the urban area expanded into the rice paddy areas of Sumida Ward. Many nagaya houses were built in Kyojima, the center of the city. Professor Nishiyama Uzo points out that "it is important to note that nagaya houses make up an overwhelming proportion only in the Hanshin area, and not so much in other cities" (Japanese Homes I, p. 76), but the situation seems to have been different in Kyojima. However, in Kyojima, which has long been considered a densely populated area of wooden buildings and an underutilized urban area in need of improvement, the movement to preserve and utilize nagaya houses had to wait until 2010, when Mr. Goto and his team built their first building.
Kyojima, a city lined with row houses (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Planning and Coordination Bureau, "Sumida Ward Kyojima Report: A tentative theory on district planning," November 1974)
During this time, in Osaka, the Teranishi Abeno Nagaya House (1932, Showa 7) was the first nagaya house to be registered as a national tangible cultural property in 2003, followed by Toyosaki Nagaya House in 2008, Nishikawa Nagaya House (1910, Meiji 43) in 2013, and Kitahama Nagaya House (1912, Taisho 1) in 2018.
We were able to visit the Nishikawa Nagaya House in Ryuzoji-cho, one of these. We took the subway to Tanimachisuji 6-chome Station, walked through a street of townhouses (nagaya houses) and modern buildings, and turned down an alley to come across a six-unit nagaya house with slightly pinkish second-floor walls, window railings, and striking latticed windows on the first floor. The owners, along with Section Chief Wakai and Section Chief Yamauchi of the Housing Policy Division of the Osaka City Urban Development Bureau, were waiting to show us around. In fiscal year 2022, subsidies were used from the Osaka City Regional Attraction Creation Building Renovation Project to repair the building's distortion, replace the roof tiles, and repaint the exterior walls.
*The Osaka City website has an introduction to this renovation project:
Nishikawa Nagaya House
We were shown around Ginkgoan, which is operated as a rental space. The interior is full of ingenious features, including a hanging alcove (Toko-no-ma), and there are even lanterns in the garden. It looked very comfortable. We were given a pamphlet introducing the HOPE Zone project (until 2017) and the Living Architecture Museum project together as "Creating urban and regional appeal by utilizing buildings, etc.: Osaka City's efforts." I felt Osaka's uniqueness in the fact that it was handled by the Housing Policy Division, but perhaps I was jumping to conclusions.
"Open Nagaya Osaka has been held in Osaka since 2011. It is an event where row houses are opened to the public on a set date, and according to the 2023 guidebook, the number of participating row houses is 30. It seems that the movement to utilize row houses is spreading rapidly in Osaka.
*Open Nagaya Osaka website:
Fujita Shinobu, "A new story starting from the nagaya house: Experiments in housing, living and urban development" (Culture and urban development series), 2023, Suiyosha
If there is an event in Tokyo similar to Open Nagaya, there is the "Sumida Mukojima EXPO". It has been held since 2020, and this year it will be from October 5th to November 3rd. In other words, our National conference in Tokyo will also be held during this period. We Japanese Association for historic conservation are also planning to rent an unit of nagaya house during the period and hold exhibitions and events.
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The next day was Sunday. At 10am, I arrived at the Momiji-no-koji street in Kyoto, and there was a line at Weekenders Coffee Roastery on the Matsubara-dori side. The roastery is open during the week, and coffee is only served on weekends. There are only a few seats inside the shop, so customers can choose their own spot to enjoy their coffee in the shared courtyard, which has been cleared of the wall.
The shared courtyard of Momiji-no-koji, with its spreading maple leaves that gave the area its name.
Momiji-no-koji and Akebiwa-roji are next to each other across the street. At the request of the couple who own them, the Kyomachiya Saisei Kenkyukai (Kyoto machiya regeneration research group, Machiya means traditional townhouses) has been working on this townhouses regeneration project from 2014 to 2022. First, six houses in Akebiwa-koji were renovated into residential properties, followed by nine houses in Momiji-no-koji being renovated for commercial use. I remember that at the first subcommittee on the theme of conservation systems at our National Conference in Nara held in November 2021, president Kojima Fusae reported on Akebiwa-no-koji as one of the success stories of cooperation with the government and fire departments, despite the establishment of a system, many townhouses have been lost.
*For more information on Akebiwa-koji, the Kyomachiya NET website has various articles on the project's progress, interviews with residents, etc. Below are articles on the progress dated September 2016 and January 2018:
Momiji-no-koji has three tunnels that allow people to pass through
All the buildings that make up Momiji-no-koji and Akebiwa-roji are nagaya houses except for the one house facing Matsubara-dori and one house in Akebiwa-koji (although the structure is different and there are almost no gaps). However, in Kyoto, nagaya houses are also kyomachiya, and the afternoon seminar focused on "regenerating dead ends."
*The Kyoto City Ordinance on the Preservation and Succession of Kyomachiya (2017) defines kyomachiya as follows: "A wooden building that existed at the time of the enforcement of the Building Standards Act or was currently under construction, repair, or remodeling at that time, and has a traditional structure and a form or design (a hirairi roof or other form or design as separately specified) that was born from urban life." It does not matter whether it is a detached house or a row house. The time of the enforcement of the Building Standards Act was 1950 (Showa 25).
In the afternoon, at the seminar held at the Hito-Machi Exchange Center, architect Uchida Yasuhiro, chairman of the Kyomachiya Saiseikenkyukai, gave a detailed explanation of the Momiji-no-koji and Akebiwa-roji projects. The process is like solving a complex puzzle, from business planning and fundraising, to ensuring evacuation and safety, to recruiting and managing tenants, all while adhering to the basic premise of making the most of the original layout and structure of the building.
Next, Ms. Kitayama Kazuyo, head of the Kyoto Machiya Preservation and Inheritance Division of the Kyoto Machiya Preservation and Inheritance Promotion Office, gave an explanation focusing on "regenerating cul-de-sacs using the linked buildings design system" as part of Kyoto City's policy to preserve and inherit machiya. The two speakers' lectures are linked in that, during the development of Momiji-no-koji Phase II, three houses facing the innermost cul-de-sac were to house restaurants instead of the offices and workshops originally planned, which required urgent procedures under the Building Standards Act, and how the linked building design system was used to get around this bottleneck.
The linked buildings design system (rentan kenchikubutsu sekkei seido) allows multiple sites, including existing buildings, to be treated as one site with the approval of a specific administrative agency when a rational design is made for a single site, and road access requirements, floor area ratio restrictions, building coverage ratio restrictions, setback regulations, and shadow restrictions can be applied. In other words, sites at the back of alleys that do not have road access can be considered as one site with the sites along the road and construction can be carried out. Momiji-no-koji received approval from Kyoto City to treat three sites with ten buildings as one site, avoiding the problem that the three sites at the back did not have road access. Of course, in order to receive this approval, various disaster prevention and evacuation measures had to be taken, both in terms of hardware and software.
According to Ms. Kitayama, Kyoto City has 4,330 dead-end streets less than 4m wide. Unless special measures are taken, it is difficult to rebuild, let alone renovate to a certain extent, buildings facing these alleys. Since the establishment of the linked building design system in the 1999 (Heisei 11) Building Standards Act, Kyoto City has established certification standards so that this system can be used to regenerate cul-de-sacs. However, the previous standards were so-called "high-use type," which allowed buildings up to three stories high if cooperative reconstruction was carried out according to certain standards. In response to this, the "small-scale building certification standard" was added in 2022 (Reiwa 4), limiting buildings to two stories or less, relaxing conditions such as the width of the passage, and making it possible to "restore alley development" while preserving the atmosphere of the alley. The linked building system is often criticized for causing urban congestion, but it was amazing to see it being developed in this way. We can't take our eyes off Kyoto's system, which is constantly evolving. Voices of envy were heard from the east of the city about Kyoto City's proactive efforts.
Small-scale building certification standards added in fiscal year 2022 (from the "Kyoto City Joint Building Design System <Cul-de-sac Regeneration> Handling Guidelines and Explanations" revised on April 14, 2022
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The revival of the nagaya houses in Osaka and the revival of the dead-end streets in Kyoto. I think they are two sides of the same coin. The reason nagaya houses are valued is because the buildings that are connected without gaps create a positive outdoor space that becomes a place for the community. It is also important that each house has an entrance and exit that opens into the ground. Conversely, for the outdoor space to be positive, it needs to be surrounded by buildings without any gaps. Nagaya houses that share walls are not necessary, and detached townhouses are fine, but the effect of nagaya houses that are connected without gaps is enormous. Furthermore, nagaya houses make efficient use of land and allow for high-density placement of houses. Sharing walls also saves materials. Nagaya houses were a very rational form of housing before buildings began to be made of steel and concrete. The "terraced houses" that make up the streets of Britain were born from the same logic.
"Until the war, nagaya houses were the main type of housing for the middle-class and lower renters who made up the majority of urban residents, but after World War II they went into a major decline" (Nishiyama Uzo, "Japanese Home I", p. 76). Instead, wooden apartments, detached houses, and condominiums have become mainstream. After these two days, a thought suddenly occurred to me: shouldn't we reverse this trend and make nagaya houses (townhouses, terraced houses) the mainstream again?
In Kyojima, house builders are rebuilding small lots, building detached houses (mostly three stories high). The number of these houses is four times the number of nagaya houses that Mr. Goto and his team are renovating, and this is pushing up land prices. But can these detached houses really be considered desirable development for the town? Nagaya houses, which share walls to save space and create streets and alleys, seem far more rational and healthy as "Housing that creates cities." With the population declining and the city center becoming sparse, it is questionable how rational high-rise condominiums can be. The prices of industrial building materials such as steel and concrete continue to rise. Wouldn't it make much more sense to use wood, a sustainable resource, to build nagaya houses, create streetscapes, and generate positive outdoor spaces? The revitalization of nagaya houses not only restores historical buildings, but may also be a trump card for the revitalization of cities in the future.
*"Housing that creates cities" is the title of a book written by Professor Koyama Hisao: Koyama Hisao, "Housing that creates cities - Townhouses in the UK and the US", Maruzen Publishing, 1990
A three-story nagaya house can have a floor area ratio of 2.0. A floor area ratio of 2.0 is the upper limit for apartments and other buildings that are not dependent on other land:
Fukukawa Yuichi and Aoyama Kunihiko, "Our town development 4: We created a fun townscape", Iwanami Shoten, 1997
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This meaningful tour and seminar was made possible through the coordination of directors Ms. Tsunamoto Koto in Osaka and Ms. Niwa Yuka in Kyoto. We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to them.
The next pre-event (Machinami seminar) for the 47th National Conference in Tokyo will be held on Thursday, July 25th from 6pm, and will be "Thinking about Disaster Prevention in Historic Quarter" by Professor Yokouchi Motoi of Kokushikan University (online).
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