A magariya is a house where the horse lives under the same roof. Maezawa is a mountain village of thatched houses, and both types stand in it: magariya, bent into an L, and sugoya, built straight. The projecting wing of a magariya is the stable, which means the animal can be fed and checked in midwinter without anyone going outside — a consideration that stops being quaint the first time you see the snow depth here.

A water channel runs through the settlement, so there is running water in front of the houses, used for clearing snow and for washing vegetables and for everything in between. Maezawa was designated an Important Preservation District in June 2011. One of the magariya is open, and going in is what makes the plan legible: where the stable sits in relation to the hearth, how the two halves of the building are connected, which rooms are warm. This is a village of a few dozen households; Aizu-Tajima is about thirty minutes away by car, and in the snow season nothing happens here without a vehicle.

Bringing a horse indoors is not only about the cold. In mountain agriculture the horse was the labour force, and a working animal has to be somewhere its condition can be seen at a glance, several times a day, without the effort of a journey. The floor plan bent itself to accommodate the order in which the work was actually done. What decided the shape of these houses was not the size of the family or the wealth behind it, but the kind of worker the household depended on, and how often that worker needed looking at.