The Former Kamiya Family Main House: A 1920s Farmhouse Inside a Moated Shin Buddhist Stronghold
At the southeast corner of the inner moat that rings Honshō-ji, a fortified temple in Anjō City, Aichi Prefecture, a low tile-roofed house faces south across the water. This is the former main house (omoya) of the Kamiya family, a timber farmhouse completed in 1920, the ninth year of the Taishō era. In August 2024 it was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, the eighteenth building in Anjō to be listed.
Visitors should know two things at the outset. The house sits within the grounds of Honshō-ji, which the national government designated a Historic Site in 2015 for its rare castle-like layout and its role in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. And the building itself is owned by the city, which acquired it and plans to open it to the public after seismic strengthening. For now the interior is not accessible, so the house is best appreciated from the surrounding precinct, which is freely open.
In Japan, "registration" sits below "designation" in the legal hierarchy of cultural properties. The register, created in 1996, applies a lighter touch to buildings roughly fifty years old or older that merit preservation, encouraging owners to keep them in use rather than freezing them as museum pieces. The Kamiya house earned its place under the criterion of "serving as a model of design," a recognition that its plan and construction represent a recognizable regional type.
A Farmhouse Shaped by Faith
What makes the building worth registering is the way its floor plan records the religious life of the western Mikawa plain. The raised, floored portion of the house follows a six-room arrangement known as mutsumadori, two rows of three rooms set front to back. The westernmost room of the front row is the butsuma, the family altar room, and it is raised a step above its neighbors. The three front rooms could be opened into one another so that people could gather and face the elevated altar, an arrangement suited to listening to sermons.
That detail is not incidental. This is the heartland of Jōdo Shinshū, the True Pure Land school of Buddhism, and Honshō-ji has been one of its strongholds for centuries. A farmhouse built to let a household and its neighbors assemble for preaching is, in effect, a domestic echo of the great temple a few steps away. Cultural property surveyors read the plan as a typical example of how Shin Buddhist devotion shaped ordinary homes in this farming district.
The construction is straightforward and regional. The roof is a simple gable clad in flat pantiles (sangawara), the workmanlike tile that spread across central Japan by the early twentieth century. Over the western doma, the earthen-floored work and cooking area, the builders inserted a low attic level called a tsushi-nikai, a half story used for storage and silkworm or grain space rather than for living. Verandas run along both the south and north faces, letting light and air through the rooms and tying the interior to the garden and the moat beyond.
What to Look For
Because the house cannot yet be entered, the rewarding view is the relationship between the building and its setting. Stand on the precinct path and you see a modest farmhouse positioned directly against a defensive water moat, an unusual pairing of a humble Taishō dwelling and a medieval fortified temple. The south-facing front, with its tiled gable and run of veranda, reads clearly even from a distance.
The house has not had an easy century. On 13 January 1945 the Mikawa earthquake, one of wartime Japan's deadliest, struck this region and cracked the building's posts and frame. It was repaired and later renovated around 1983, which is part of why it survives in usable condition today at more than a hundred years old. The city's plan is to reinforce it against future quakes and find a public use for it within a projected historic park centered on the temple.
Seen together with Honshō-ji's moats, earthen ramparts, and seventeenth-century main hall, the farmhouse rounds out a layered landscape: a religious fortress from the age of war, the rebuilt temple of the peaceful Edo centuries, and a working farmhouse of the modern era, all within one set of grounds.
Around the Site: Honshō-ji and Its History
The temple that frames the house is the real reason most travelers come to Nodera. Honshō-ji is said to have been founded around 1206 by Keien, a disciple of the Pure Land teacher Shinran, and it belongs to the Ōtani branch of Jōdo Shinshū. By the sixteenth century it had grown into one of the "Three Temples of Mikawa," a trio of powerful Shin Buddhist centers, and it was ringed with double moats and earthen walls. Castle historians still study it as a jōkaku-garan, a temple built like a fortress.
In 1563 the congregations of these temples rose against the young lord Matsudaira Motoyasu, soon to be known as Tokugawa Ieyasu, in the Mikawa Ikkō-ikki, a revolt that split his own retainers. Honshō-ji stood at the center of the resistance. After the uprising collapsed the temple was suppressed, then revived, and its present main hall was rebuilt in 1663. The drama of that confrontation reached a wide audience again through the 2023 NHK historical series on Ieyasu, which sent many visitors to these grounds.
The precinct is open daily, generally from around 9:00 to 16:00, and you can walk it freely. Look for the main hall (a Prefectural Cultural Property), the drum tower and bell tower, the storehouse with its fire-resistant latticed plaster walls, and the lotus that blooms in the old moat in midsummer. For a wider day out, the flower gardens of Anjō Denpark are a popular stop elsewhere in the city.
The site lies about a fifteen-minute walk from Minami-Sakurai Station on the Meitetsu Nishio Line; from Nagoya, change at Shin-Anjō onto the Nishio Line. Drivers will find parking at the temple, reached by an unusually narrow gate, roughly thirty minutes from the Toyota-minami interchange on the Isewan-gan Expressway.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the Former Kamiya Family Main House?
- Not at present. The city of Anjō owns the building and intends to open it to the public after seismic reinforcement, as part of a planned historic park around Honshō-ji. Until then you can view its exterior from the surrounding temple grounds, which are freely accessible.
- Is it a National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property?
- Neither. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, a separate and lighter category introduced in 1996 for buildings worth preserving, typically about fifty years old or more. It was registered in August 2024 under the criterion of serving as a model of design.
- Why is a 1920 farmhouse considered significant?
- Its six-room plan, with a raised altar room and front rooms that open up for sermons, reflects the strong Shin Buddhist faith of the western Mikawa farming district. Surveyors view it as a clear regional example of how that devotion shaped ordinary homes.
- How is it connected to Honshō-ji?
- The house stands within the temple precinct, just southeast of the inner moat. Honshō-ji is a fortified Shin Buddhist temple and a national Historic Site, known as a center of the sixteenth-century Mikawa Ikkō-ikki uprising against the future Tokugawa Ieyasu.
- How do I get there?
- It is about a fifteen-minute walk from Minami-Sakurai Station on the Meitetsu Nishio Line. From Nagoya, transfer at Shin-Anjō to the Nishio Line. Parking is available at the temple for those arriving by car.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Kamiya Family Main House (Kyū-Kamiya-ke Jūtaku Omoya) |
|---|---|
| Location | 33-2 Nodera, Nodera-chō, Anjō City, Aichi Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building); registered 15 August 2024 (registration no. 23-0609) |
| Registration criterion | Serving as a model of design |
| Built | 1920 (Taishō 9); renovated c. 1983 |
| Count | 1 building |
| Structure | Timber, single story with partial upper floor; gabled pantile roof; building area approx. 203 m² |
| Owner | City of Anjō |
| Public access | Interior not currently open; exterior viewable from the Honshō-ji precinct (a National Historic Site), generally open 9:00–16:00 |
| Access | About 15 min on foot from Minami-Sakurai Station, Meitetsu Nishio Line |
References
- Cultural Heritage Online (National Institutes for Cultural Heritage): Former Kamiya Family Main House
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/574925
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00015027
- City of Anjō: Former Kamiya Family Main House (registered historic building)
- https://www.city.anjo.aichi.jp/shisei/shisetsu/kyoikushisetsu/maibun-rekisitekikenzoubutu.html
- City of Anjō: Honshō-ji Precinct (National Historic Site)
- https://www.city.anjo.aichi.jp/shisei/shisetsu/kyoikushisetsu/maibun-sites-honsyouji.html
- Aichi Now (Official Aichi Prefecture Tourism Site): Honshō-ji
- https://aichinow.pref.aichi.jp/spots/detail/2745/
Last verified: 2026.06.17