Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House

A village headman's house in the eastern Owari hills

The Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House (旧市川家住宅主屋, Kyū-Ichikawa-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is an Edo-period single-storey farmhouse in Nogata-chō, Nisshin City, Aichi Prefecture, added to the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 24 December 2013. Its Kayabuki thatch is currently protected under a temporary sheet-metal covering, and the building occupies 163 square meters.

The Ichikawa family served as headmen of Nogata village, each head of the house taking the name Tōzō. Family documents record that a branch of the line established itself on this site in 1769. The main house is said to have arrived with them, moved from a headman's residence in Ueda village, now part of Tenpaku Ward in Nagoya.

The plan places an earth-floored work space, or doma, along the right side. The raised floor is divided into two rows of three rooms. At the far end of the front row sits the zashiki, the formal room, with the naka-no-ma beside it; opened together, the two make a reception suite. Behind them run the board-floored living room and two storage rooms. This is a large farmhouse built to the standing of a village headman, and the layout still says so.

The yotsudate frame, and an inscription that fixed the date

Registration came under the criterion for buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of Japan, and what carried the case was the frame. The Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House uses a local carpentry system known as yotsudate, also called toriidate. Four posts of the main frame, including the one standing on the line between doma and raised floor, are tied together by beams. Two posts spanned by a beam resemble a torii gate, which is where the second name comes from.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs database notes that the house takes yotsudate as its basis while showing, in places, a more developed structural stage. It is not a textbook example of a finished type so much as a record of that type still settling into shape.

The date came into focus after registration. During repair work in fiscal 2014, an ink inscription bearing the year Hōei 6 was found in the structure, and Nisshin City reports that this established when the house was built. Hōei 6 corresponds to 1709.

The national database gives the date as Meiwa 6, or 1769, which is the year the building reached its present site. Because registration took place in 2013 and the inscription surfaced afterwards, the two records still differ. The sequence that fits both is straightforward: built in 1709, moved here in 1769.

What to look for

The doma just inside the entrance has a packed-earth floor of the kind called tataki. Stop there and look up at the thick post on the boundary with the board floor. A beam crosses above it, and the torii-like shape appears. One glance at that junction explains the word yotsudate faster than any drawing.

The board-floored room was partitioned in two during the Kaei era of the mid-19th century, then returned to its original single-room form in the recent repairs. Daily life happened here, along with the night work that filled the winter months.

The fittings between the storeroom and the board floor preserve an older technique. The single sliding wooden door hangs in a groove formed by nailing strips onto the lintel, a method called tsukehibata, rather than by cutting the groove into the timber itself.

In the zashiki and naka-no-ma there is a built-in writing alcove, a Tokonoma, plain Ranma transoms and decorative nail covers. These are the furnishings of a house that received guests, and the restraint in them is deliberate. What makes the Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House rewarding is the distance between the rough carpentry on the doma side and the finished work on the guest side, held inside one roof. Sit on the Engawa veranda facing the garden and both are in view at once.

The stable survives too. The fifth-generation head of the family, who served as mayor of Kakuyama village during the Meiji era, kept a Kiso horse in it.

Visiting

The Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House has been open to the public since 4 June 2015. Hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors are free to walk through the rooms on their own. It closes Mondays, opening instead when a Monday falls on a national holiday, and over the New Year period from 28 December to 4 January. Admission is free.

Eating is permitted inside the Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House, on the board floor and the veranda south of the tatami rooms, as well as in the open yard. There are no bins on site, so rubbish must be carried out, and alcohol is discouraged.

By public transport, take the Meitetsu Bus Nisshin Chūō Line to the Nogata stop; the house is a minute's walk away. From Nisshin City Hall it is about ten minutes on foot. Parking holds eight cars, one of them reserved for visitors with disabilities, and the city asks people to use public transport where possible. Enquiries: 0561-78-0855.

Management of the Former Ichikawa Family Residence Main House passed to a designated operator in April 2023, and opening days were extended at that point. Seasonal displays run through the year, including New Year decorations in January, hina dolls in March, Boys' Festival armour in May and Tanabata streamers in July, alongside workshops. (Hours and admission confirmed 1 September 2026.)