A man was making a rope from straw in front of a house that used to be a net maker in Kujukuri

The Nippon Minka-en (Japan Open-air Folk House Museum) in Kawasaki has 25 old private houses that have been relocated. The houses here are not the kind that can be converted into an old house cafe, but real old houses. All of the houses are quite open, and if you were to live in one of them, it would be hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and you would feel very uncomfortable.

The old houses were built along the roads in the open-air musem, and walking around them made me feel like I was in a real village somewhere. As I wandered along, I came to the former Sakuta Family Residence, the relocated residence of a prominent man who was the head of Sakuta Village (Sakuta, Kujukuri Town, Yamatake-gun, Chiba Prefecture) and also worked as a sardine netter.

Even though the houses here are mainly from eastern Japan, I think it would be interesting to compare the different types of houses from different periods and regions. But I didn't really understand the differences. I was more interested in the man who was doing something under the eaves of the old Sakuta family house.

The man was in the middle of making a rope out of straw. The Nippon Minka-en not only preserves and exhibits old houses, but also aims to preserve, pass down, and utilize folk tools. There is a group called the Folk Tool Making Technique Preservation Society, and visitors can actually experience making folk tools. As I watched the men working silently under the eaves of the house, I felt more and more as if this was a living village, not an outdoor museum.

Comment via

日本語