You can experience 18th-century rural Japan through a new attraction at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. It's an old Shōya house built more than 300 years ago in Marugame — in the country’s southwest. The house was meticulously disassembled and shipped to its new home in the Huntington's Japanese gardens section, and then reassembled. The process took eight years, having many delays because of the COVID pandemic. Now it’s open to the public.
The 3,000-square-foot house features two gardens, solid wood beams that form natural arches, and two entrances — one reserved for feudal lords and another for everyone else. The residence was donated by Yohko and Akira Yokoi, who say it was their ancestral home.
Initially, the Shōya house was thought to be a prefabricated post-World War II home. But it was actually built after the war that unified Japan in the 1600s, says Robert Hori, cultural curator and program director for the Huntington Gardens, who oversaw the process.
Before its showing at the Huntington Gardens, Hori says the home was last renovated around 1870. “They took the house, first removing the roof, then taking off the plaster, removing the tatami mats and all the sliding doors. And they numbered each piece in the house with the position of where it was, and they marked any damage that had to be replaced. They took it to a giant warehouse where they repaired the house, took out the damaged portions, spliced new wood into it, and then they rebuilt it in Japan.”
He continues, “Structural engineers went to check it to figure out how it should be fortified, strengthened to meet seismic standards. Once that was done … it was taken apart a second time in Japan in a matter of a year, and then put in crates and then shipped to the United States.”
At the core of the process, as Hori explains, was keeping the home as preserved as possible, while recognizing what its restoration needs. Today, the Shōya house has new walls, tiles, and roofing.
“The California summer can be very brutal. The Japanese craftsmen were aware of this, but they had spent two and a half years … restoring this house, and they felt that it was really their responsibility to make sure that it was re-erected in the United States. The head of the team, Mr. Nakamura, wanted to make sure that everything was done correctly, traditionally, and to the highest quality. He instilled that ethic, that ethos in the craftsmen who came, so that is the level of craftsmanship that went into the house.”
This 3,000-square-foot home includes restored walls and roofing. Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
This view shows the private garden at the Japanese Heritage Shōya House. Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
The exterior of the Yokoi family’s historic home in its original location in Marugame, Japan. Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
The Japanese Heritage Shōya House includes this gateway house. Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.