House with "pen", Taiji 太地

Houses with "pen", as local people call it, may be one of the Western influences brought back by workers who went to places such as North/South America and Australia in the late 19c. Or did it come from the ship painting? No one is too sure about the origin of this unusual style - paint (penki) on traditional Japanese houses, but it is certainly well suited to the port area of this fishing town. There are painted Western style houses in Hokkaido eg Sapporo and Hakodate, but painted Japanese houses are not found outside Taiji. Some architects think this is a rare example worth being listed as the Important Traditional Group of Building like Yuasa town (blog, 12 & 26 /12/08).