Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building

A Merchant's House Facing Honmachi Street

The Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building (旧磯部家住宅主屋, Kyū Isobe-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo-period merchant house in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 9 February 2005. It dates from the Keiō era, between 1865 and 1868, and is a two-story timber structure with a tiled roof and a building area of 171 square meters.

The house faces west onto Honmachi Street, the road that runs south from the main gate of Inuyama Castle through the old merchant quarter and on toward Nagoya. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records the address by its local block name, Nakahonmachi.

The Isobe family traded here under the shop name Kashiwaya, selling kimono fabric. After the Second World War the business shifted to processing and selling tea, and the family eventually moved their household elsewhere. The buildings were left to serve as stock warehouses. In 2004 the family donated the property to Inuyama City, which carried out conservation work and opened it to visitors.

The frontage measures three and a half ken, while the plot runs eight ken deep. The narrow street face and the long tail behind it are the standard proportions of a Machiya lot, and the Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building stands at the head of the sequence of buildings that fill it.

Why It Was Registered

The criterion applied here reads "contributes to the historic landscape of the nation." What earned the listing was not a single striking feature but the building's part in the continuous street frontage of a castle town. Its register number is 23-0168, from the forty-fifth round of registrations.

Inside, an earth-floored passage called a Toriniwa runs along the south side behind the shop space, with a Buddhist altar room and reception rooms ranged along the north. The upper floor carries reception rooms on the street side. The national database notes that despite the narrow frontage the carpentry is careful in both the public and the private parts of the house.

Four more buildings on the same plot were registered on the same day: the rear parlor, the storehouse, the inner storehouse and the storage shed. The Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building is the oldest of the five and the only one built before the Meiji period. Reading the dates in order shows a compound that grew as the business grew, rather than one raised at a stroke.

What to Look For

The first thing you see on entering is the earth floor running south through the building. In a townhouse of this type it served as the working spine, linking the shop at the front with the living quarters behind, and the cooking hearth and water supply sat along it. Look up and the beams are set surprisingly low.

From the north reception room a hakodan, a staircase built as a stack of chests with drawers and cupboards under each tread, climbs to the second floor. It is a way of getting storage out of a footprint that has none to spare.

Upstairs are two rooms in sequence, one of six mats and one of eight, together 52.49 square meters. Both have saobuchi ceilings of thin battens and boards. The eight-mat room at the back has an Oribe-style alcove and was the family's own living room; the six-mat room in front doubled as a servant's room and storage. It is worth climbing the stairs. The noise of the street drops away, and the house reads as a home rather than a shopfront.

One detail rewards attention throughout the Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building: how the chamfering and finish of the timber changes between the parts a customer would have seen and the parts only the household used.

Visiting

The house is open year round as the Former Isobe Residence Restored Facility, and admission is free. Opening hours are 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30. It closes from 29 to 31 December, and may close at short notice when a weather warning is issued.

Personal photography is fine. Commercial shoots, any filming that involves equipment, and photography in special costume all require a written proposal submitted in advance to the Historic Town Development Division at Inuyama City Hall. School visits and group tours also need a prior consultation arranged by telephone.

The nearest station is Meitetsu Inuyama, about a ten-minute walk from the west exit. From Meitetsu Nagoya the limited express takes roughly 25 minutes. The Wanmaru-kun community bus stops at Ekimae-dori, two minutes away on foot.

There is no visitor parking at the site, so public transport or one of the paid lots around the castle town is the practical choice. The second-floor rooms of the Former Isobe Family Residence Main Building are also rented out for exhibitions, which can change the route visitors take through the house. Telephone 0568-65-3444 to check on the day.