Morikawa Family Residence Main House

A merchant house on the Junken Kaido

The Morikawa Family Residence Main House (森川家住宅主屋, Morikawa-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo period townhouse in the Kariyasuka district of Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 8 July 2008. It faces north onto the Junken Kaido, an old road running east and west through the city, and presents a frontage of 7 Ken under a Kirizuma-zukuri roof of Sangawara-buki tiles. The building area is 171 square metres.

The Morikawa family were among the substantial landholders of Kariyasuka village in old Owari Province, and from the Tenpo era of the 1830s until the end of the Meiji period they ran a sake brewery. Their compound follows a simple logic: the main house on the road, a storehouse immediately west of it, and a detached reception wing set at a right angle to the south. A garden lies between the house and that wing.

A Munafuda, the ridge tablet Japanese carpenters left inside a roof, dates the construction to 1855. A remodelling in 1869 is said to have shifted the ridge beam back to gain headroom across the upper floor. One point deserves a note. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records the structure as single storey, while the same database's descriptive text, and the prefectural account, both call the Morikawa Family Residence Main House a Tsushi-nikai townhouse, meaning it carries a low half storey above the ground floor. The disagreement is about how that low storey is counted, not about the building itself.

Why it was registered

The criterion applied was contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The registration number is 23-0305, issued in the sixtieth round of registrations, and the notice appeared in the official gazette on 23 July 2008. The detached study wing (23-0306) and the storehouse (23-0307) were registered on the same day, so all three buildings of one household hold national status together.

What earned the listing is width. At 7 ken along the road and 6 ken deep through the main frame, the Morikawa Family Residence Main House simply occupies more street than anything near it. The storehouse next door turns its gable end to the road, so a walker passing the two sees a long horizontal eave give way to a tall vertical wall. That alternation is what gives this stretch of Kariyasuka its rhythm.

Registration is worth distinguishing from designation. A National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property is designated, a stricter status carrying tighter controls; the register created in 1996 works by notification and is meant for buildings that stay in use. A house still lived in fits that intention exactly.

What the street elevation tells you

The ground floor divides its width between an entrance on the east and a lattice screen on the west. The doorway carries a large sliding door with a small wicket cut into it, so the household could open a person-sized gap without moving the whole panel. Beside it, a projecting lattice bay steps out towards the road, letting light in while keeping the interior from public view.

Look higher and the detail concentrates. The eaves are carried on purlins pushed out beyond the posts, a technique that supports a deep overhang without brackets. At either end of the facade a short fire wall, or Udatsu, rises above the roofline; these began as barriers against fire spreading between neighbours and became markers of a household's standing. The upper wall is finished so that posts and tie beams stay visible, a treatment common to townhouses across the Owari plain.

Inside, an earth-floored passage runs along the east side of the Morikawa Family Residence Main House. Entrance Doma, working yard and kitchen floor follow one another front to back in the manner of a Toriniwa, though partitions separate them. West of the passage sit six rooms in two files of three. The row nearer the earth floor runs an eight-mat entrance room, a six-mat middle room and a ten-mat boarded room; the outer row gives an eight-mat room, a six-mat Buddhist altar room and a ten-mat Zashiki.

That final reception room is the formal one. A Nageshi rail runs around the walls, the ceiling is framed with slender battens, and the display alcove pairs a Tokonoma with a side recess carrying a small overhead cupboard. Ornament is restrained throughout; the effect depends on timber quality and proportion. From the west face of the house a covered forecourt leads to the storehouse, while the west end of the south veranda opens towards the study wing.

Visiting

The Morikawa Family Residence Main House is privately owned and still occupied. The interior is closed and no general admission is offered, whether by appointment or on open days. Visitors see the building from the Junken Kaido that runs past its front.

Photography from the public road is not restricted, but this is somebody's home. Stay outside the property line, avoid framing shots that include residents or the entrance in use, and keep off the carriageway; the road is narrow and serves local traffic.

The nearest station is Kariyasuka on the Meitetsu Bisai Line, about 600 metres to the southwest and roughly 8 minutes on foot. From Meitetsu Ichinomiya, Kariyasuka is the second stop, after Kannonji. The station is unstaffed and there is no tourist counter outside it. Enquiries about the property go to the museum administration section of Ichinomiya City on 0586-46-3215.

One footnote for anyone drawn here by tea. Morikawa Kanichiro (1887 to 1980), the twenty-first head of the family, took the name Nyoshin'an and was among the leading tea practitioners of the Nagoya region from the late Meiji period into the Showa era. Two tea houses once stood in this compound; one was moved to Konan City and the other to Midori Ward in Nagoya. Neither remains on the site today.