Ito Family Residence Main Building

A merchant house facing Honmachi Street

The Ito Family Residence Main Building (伊藤家住宅主屋, Itō-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo period Machiya townhouse at 677 Higashikoken, Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (Structures) on 9 February 2005. It is a single-storey timber building with a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof laid in Sangawara-buki pantiles, covering 175 square metres.

The street it faces matters. Honmachi runs south from the site of the outer gate of Inuyama Castle, and in the Edo period it was the spine of the merchants' quarter of the castle town. The Ito Family Residence Main Building opens its frontage westward onto it. The frontage measures six and a half Ken and the depth eight ken, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes as large for an Inuyama townhouse. On a street of narrow shopfronts pressed together, the extra width is noticeable at walking pace.

The building dates from the closing decades of the Edo period, somewhere between about 1830 and 1867. Inside, an earth-floored passage called a Toriniwa runs the length of the north side, with two rows of rooms to the south. At the back, a covered corridor leads north to the storehouse and another leads south to the privy. Under the roof sits a low half-storey, the Tsushi-nikai.

One detail from the register is easy to miss. The Agency for Cultural Affairs files this building under tertiary industry rather than housing, while the storehouse on the same plot is filed under housing. The classification records what the street-facing block was for: trade.

Why it is on the register

The Ito Family Residence Main Building was registered under the criterion covering buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. The judgement was not about exceptional artistry in a single building. It was about the part this one plays inside a wider streetscape.

Inuyama's castle town kept its Edo street grid. Honmachi still carries a run of narrow-fronted townhouses, and that run only survives while enough individual buildings hold their old form. Take away a few and the street stops reading as a street from another century. This house was recognised as one of the pieces holding that continuity together.

Registration in Japan is a lighter instrument than designation. Owners may remodel interiors so long as the exterior is not substantially altered, and the system assumes buildings will stay in use. Inuyama City describes it as a way of treating heritage as a working asset. The Ito Family Residence Main Building, still trading from its ground floor, is close to what the system was designed to produce.

The registration was gazetted on 28 February 2005 under number 23-0181. The storehouse at the rear of the same plot carries 23-0182, the next number in sequence. Several other townhouses near Honmachi entered the register on the same date, and the run of numbers shows the street being read as a single fabric rather than a set of unrelated houses.

What to look at

Start with the height of the eaves. This house has what Japanese carpenters call a low stance: short posts, a purlin set low, a roof that comes down close to the street. Townhouses rebuilt after the Meiji period gained taller eaves because the upper floor became living space. The low line here reads as the older pattern.

Beneath that roof is the Tsushi-nikai, a half-storey too low to stand up in, used for storage and sometimes for sleeping quarters. From the street it shows only as a band of small openings above the shopfront.

Width is easiest to judge by comparison. Townhouse plots along Honmachi typically run about 4.5 metres across the front and around 40 metres deep. The Ito Family Residence Main Building has a broader frontage than that norm while keeping the deep plan, with the storehouse sitting at the far end of the lot.

If you get inside, walk the Toriniwa to the back. The earth floor cuts straight through the building with the rooms ranged along one side. Light drops away as you go, until what remains falls from a skylight or an interior court. The plan of a machiya is easier to learn through that gradient of light than from a drawing.

At the rear the corridors divide, north to the storehouse and south to the privy. Trade at the front, living in the middle, storage at the very back: the old order of a merchant house is still legible in the way the floors connect.

Visiting

The Ito Family Residence Main Building is privately owned and there is no heritage opening scheme, no admission ticket and no set visiting hours. The exterior can be seen from Honmachi at any time, and the street is pedestrian-heavy through the day.

The ground floor currently houses a leather goods maker and shop. Customers who come in to buy or to join a craft session can see part of the interior, including the passage and the exposed beams. The shop opens from 10:00 to 19:00 and closes on Wednesdays. It is a working business rather than a museum, so treat a look inside as a courtesy that comes with a visit to the shop.

Photography of the exterior from the street is unrestricted. Inside, follow the shop's instructions and keep out of the way of trade.

To get there, leave Inuyama Station on the Meitetsu Inuyama and Hiromi lines by the west exit and walk west, then turn north onto Honmachi. The walk takes about ten minutes and covers roughly 750 metres. From the keep of Inuyama Castle the house lies about 600 metres to the south, on the natural walking route between castle and station. There is no dedicated parking; drivers use the paid car parks around the castle town.