Tawaraya Ryokan

TTawaraya Ryokan in Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto: in INAX REPORT it is the inn’s proprietor, not the architect, who says the new wing began from the question “what is Japanese?”. We read what the sources tie to Junzo Yoshimura’s 1965 design, and what they leave unsaid.

Who Says It Began With “What Is Japanese?”

The voice on the page is the innkeeper’s. Toshi Satow, the eleventh proprietor at the time of publication, speaks of the 1965 new wing of Tawaraya Ryokan: to make an inn that works internationally while drawing on old Japanese design, she says, the inn started from the question of what “wa” (Japanese-ness) is (“wa to wa nani ka”; our translation). The source is her comment in INAX REPORT no. 190 (a special feature on design in hospitality). It is the inn, not the architect, that says the new wing began from “what is Japanese?”

So what did the architect do? In Satow’s words, Junzo Yoshimura knew old buildings deeply and taught the inn a great deal, showing real examples. One she cites: the origin of the “Yoshimura-style shoji” lies in the Momoyama period. She remembers vividly realising that genuine design outlasts its age.

By Satow’s account, the relationship began in 1949, when the government’s registration system for international tourist inns set conditions on room numbers and facilities. The inn sought Yoshimura’s advice, and that, she says, was the start. He often visited with his teacher, Antonin Raymond. Later the inn decided to build a new wing, and asked him to design it.

One detail snags. Satow took over the inn in 1969, so the commission for the new wing came before her time. The “we” in her comment seems to point to the inn as a whole, not to one person.

The inn’s own billing is worth a look. Founded in the Hoei era, it presents its guest rooms as based on the sukiya style, and calls itself the oldest surviving inn in Kyoto. Cultural Heritage Online, the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ database, echoes it in its description: “known as the oldest surviving inn in Kyoto”.

To a guest the inn is one continuous house, with no main building or new wing. The “About Tawaraya” page on the official website does not mention Yoshimura, so what we can say of him and the new wing rests on a magazine: a secondary source.

That is the question of this article. If it is the inn that speaks, what did the architect, Junzo Yoshimura, put into Tawaraya? Which parts are his work, and from where on do the sources fall silent?

Whose Work Is the Window?

Some rooms have fixed glass running from floor to lintel, opening onto the garden. Guests often call it “novel”, Satow says.

She gives her reasons plainly. The openings come from a wish to recreate a space in which inside and outside become one, as in old grass-roofed tea huts or shinden-style halls. But this is an inn: it must keep out heat and cold and deal with noise. Thick glass, made possible by modern technology, finally made it work. If the frame is designed so that it cannot be seen, the unity of garden and room is stronger still. The thickness is in the figures below. An old hut’s openness, achieved with modern glass.

So whose work is it? Her comment does not say which building the windows are in, or who designed them. The clues are in the photo captions: the guest room Sui has large fixed-glass openings, and Gyosui has a large opening whose fittings can all be opened. Izumi, the inn’s oldest room, was renovated in 2006 and is so open that you would not think glass was there. None of the rooms is placed in the main building or the new wing.

So the window cannot be called Yoshimura’s work.

The window has a second protagonist: upkeep. Satow says the stillness of a space in which you seem to stand in the middle of the garden was achieved by professionals polishing the glass every day. In Izumi, a caption says, the glass was polished carefully each day by the men on staff (at the time of publication).

On to the gardens. The Cultural Heritage Online description records that the grounds hold several inner and outer gardens, arranged so that every guest room can see one. Satow adds that one garden is shown from many angles to change its atmosphere. Ground-floor rooms feel at one with the garden; those on the second and third floors look down on it. If the window removes its frame, it is the placing of the garden that decides how far the room seems to reach.

Yoshimura’s side offers a clue too. Kosuke Hato’s paper studies his writings from 1950 to 1965. According to the paper, what he wrote about most was the relationship between a building and its surrounding nature or garden; there is also an argument for bringing tradition to life with new materials and equipment. The debate over shoin versus sukiya barely appears. The paper does not mention Tawaraya. The inn’s account of its windows and Yoshimura’s way of thinking are alike. But being alike is not evidence that the windows are his. Laying them side by side is as far as this goes.

In front of a large window onto the garden, run your eye between floor and lintel and look for the point where the line of a frame should stop. If you cannot find it, check whether the view of the garden runs unbroken to the edge of the floor.

The window’s designer does not appear in the sources. The hands that polish it every day do.

The Tawaraya That Is Not Yoshimura

The range of Yoshimura’s confirmed work is set out in the opening of the INAX REPORT article. Tawaraya consists of a timber main building in the sukiya manner from the early Meiji period and a reinforced-concrete new wing designed by Junzo Yoshimura (as of the article). The design column of its building summary reads Toshi Satow, Junzo Yoshimura (in part). Yoshimura is not the designer of the whole inn but one whose entry in the design column carries “(in part)”.

The inn’s buildings carry layers of other hands. By Satow’s account, around 1927 her father remodelled a shoin-style building, inherited from the previous generation, into sukiya style; which building is not stated. The entrance he remodelled, Satow feels, is so complete that it must not be touched, a “sanctuary”. Yet the same entrance is called “the only place left unaltered” in a caption, and how the two sit together is not explained. At the time of publication, rooms continued to be renovated one a year, and the magazine likens the interior, shaped by repeated renovation and extension, to a burrow. An inn that reworks one room a year is always part-way through renovation.

The national registration can be checked in Cultural Heritage Online. Tawaraya is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (building), one building, registered on 14 October 1999: two-storey timber with a tiled roof. The description says it was rebuilt after being burned in the Kinmon Incident, and that elegance and dignity can be felt in its refined sukiya-style architecture. “Registered cultural property” sounds like a guarantee of age for the whole inn. The title points at this one building.

The registered structure is two-storey timber, which does not match the reinforced-concrete new wing. The registration may cover the timber building, with Yoshimura’s wing outside that entry. The scope is not checked here.

The first two figures are for the whole inn; the third is for the single registered building. Please do not read a figure for the whole inn as one for the registered building.

The plumbing has been renewed on the inn’s own judgement. Satow says the inn is keen to look at new things, chiefly equipment and water facilities. Washlet-style toilets were introduced early. The koyamaki (Japanese umbrella pine) bath, said to last thirty years, is replaced every ten, and the care in between is no small matter. The bath was designed, a caption says, with its relationship to the garden, as seen from the water, foremost, in koyamaki, which resists water and damp better than cypress. At the time of publication the inn was replacing equipment eagerly and leaving the entrance untouched.

There are 18 guest rooms (as of October 2026). No two share a layout or floor area. The inn describes each room as having its own character, reflecting the tastes of successive proprietors.

The inn does not rest on a single answer. Tawaraya is sometimes likened to a museum, Satow says, but the inn looks for things that suit the place, regardless of value, period, west or east, and that bring out the best in each other and in the setting. On the second floor, she notes, is a study once used by the proprietor’s husband, where Nordic furniture sits naturally. Where Yoshimura’s new wing fits among those answers is not in the sources.

Junzo Yoshimura and Tawaraya

Yoshimura was born in Tokyo in 1908 and died in 1997. His best-known works include the basic design of the Imperial Palace’s new main palace (Shin-kyuden), the new wing of the Nara National Museum and the Yatsugatake Kogen Concert Hall.

At Tawaraya he survives only as the inn describes him: a man deeply versed in old buildings, who taught with real examples, and who told the story of the Momoyama shoji. His own words are not in the sources we could check. In the inn’s telling he is always the one who teaches. The Yoshimura it describes is made of four scenes: the consultation, the visits with his teacher, the commission for the new wing, and the talk of Momoyama shoji.

Back to the opening question. It is the inn that says it began from “what is Japanese?”, and the architect appeared as someone who answers with examples. What the sources let us tie to Yoshimura is the design of the new wing, and no further.

Here is what the sources do not say. Which building are the large glass openings in, and who designed them? Who decided the placement of the gardens? How many rooms does the new wing have? Does the registration include the new wing? None of this is written in the sources we could check, and we decide neither that it is Yoshimura’s work nor that it is not.

At the end of her comment Satow names her ideal: guests who come saying, without quite knowing why, that somehow the place is comfortable. It is an ideal set on the side of a guest who does not dwell on the details.

Three things to see here

「The origin of the “Yoshimura-style shoji” lies in the Momoyama period.」

Toshi Satow (eleventh proprietor at the time of publication), in her comment in INAX REPORT no. 190; our translation

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