Horibe Family Residence Main Building

Horibe Family Residence Main Building: Inuyama's Last Samurai-Style House

Step off the old Nagoya highway just past the dog-leg in the road that once guarded the outer moat of Inuyama's castle town, and a broad two-storey wooden house rises to the north, its long eaves running parallel to the street. This is the main building of the Horibe Family Residence, built in 1883 by Horibe Katsushiro, the twelfth head of a family that had served the Naruse lords of Inuyama Castle for generations.

Katsushiro (1832-1907) lived through the collapse of the samurai order. When retainer stipends were abolished after the Meiji Restoration, he moved into business, made his fortune, and bought this plot inside the former castle town to raise silkworms. The house he commissioned from the master carpenter Kawamura Seiemon reads as two things at once: a warrior family's dwelling and a working sericulture household.

Why It Is Registered

In March 2006 the main building was entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties, one of six structures in the Horibe compound listed together. The registration system, created in 1996, protects buildings roughly fifty years or older that have helped shape the character of a place. The Horibe main building qualified as a structure that contributes to the historical landscape of the nation.

Its particular value lies in what survives nowhere else in Inuyama. Though built in the Meiji era, the house keeps the layout and manners of a warrior residence, and it is regarded as the only samurai-style dwelling still standing in the old castle town. The measured plan, the placement of rooms for receiving guests, and small details such as a spear rack set into the wall near the entrance all point back to the family's military past.

What to Look For

The house runs about nine and a half bays along the front and four bays deep, with a shallow lean-to roof along both the street side and the rear. Inside, the western third is given over to an earthen-floored work area and kitchen, while the eastern rooms form a six-room residential block. This split between labor and living space is the clearest sign of a household that farmed silk and received visitors under one roof.

Near the entrance, look for the spear rack fixed to the wall of a ground-floor room, a holdover from samurai custom. A boxed staircase at the center of the house still carries visitors to the second floor, and a sliding panel at its head could seal the upper story off from the ground floor. Upstairs, two formal rooms sit beside spaces once used for storage and, by tradition, for raising silkworms. The west end of the second floor opens into a void above the entrance hall, letting you look down on the genkan below.

Between the house and the street wall lies a narrow front garden set with stepping stones and a stone lantern, arranged so that an important guest could be led straight to the reception room. A rare touch inside is a dedicated telephone room, an unusual comfort for a rural house of its day. Part of the ground floor now holds a lantern workshop and café called Minagura.