Ozeki Family Main House

What the Ozeki Family Main House Is

The Ozeki Family Main House (尾関家住宅主屋, Ozeki-ke Jutaku Shuoku) is a late Edo period dwelling in Shirayamadaira, Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 23 August 1999. It belongs to the Ozeki family, who fired roof tiles for the lords of Inuyama Castle before becoming the potters who brought Inuyama ware back to life.

The building runs east to west, two storeys of timber under a tiled Kirizuma-zukuri roof, with a building area of 171 square metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the construction date as Tenpo 13 (1842). The present owners describe the house as raised around Tenpo 14 (1843). The gap is small, and this article follows the registration record.

The Ozeki lived first at Yozaka, in the castle town below Inuyama Castle, holding the post of official tile maker to the domain. In 1842 a great fire broke out at their premises, and the family was required to move to the hillside at Shirayamadaira. What they built after that move is the Ozeki Family Main House standing today, on a slope beside the temple complex of Inuyama Naritasan.

Why It Carries Registered Status

The Ozeki Family Main House holds registration number 23-0034, from the nineteenth round of listings, with the public notice issued on 7 September 1999. The criterion applied was contribution to the historic landscape of the country. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property sits under a lighter regime than a National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property: owners file notifications rather than seek permits, and the system assumes the building stays in use.

The plan is what carries the value. A large earthen-floored work hall, the doma, occupies the eastern side with a frontage of 2 ken and a depth of 6 ken and a half. Behind it to the south sit three rooms, the innermost an eight-mat chamber fitted with an alcove and shelving, fronted by a half-ken veranda. North of these lie a Buddhist altar room and a storage room, and three more rooms including the kitchen run along the earthen floor. A craftsman's household announces itself in floor area before it does in formal reception space.

The upper storey carries a detail worth naming. Horizontal nageshi rails were fitted above and below the inner faces of the second-floor windows, a finish the Aichi prefectural commentary singles out as characteristic of the Ozeki Family Main House. During the Meiji era the family raised silkworms up there. The floor now serves as storage.

The house is also where the family trade changed. In Keio 2 (1866) Ozeki Sakujuro Nobunari, still making tiles, succeeded in producing porcelain decorated with cherry blossom and maple in the local akae overglaze red technique. Inuyama ware, close to extinction at that point, recovered from there. The Ozeki Family Storehouse, standing to the north-west, was registered on the same day, so house and storehouse form a single registered compound.

What to Look For

The Working Floor

Start at ground level. The doma measures 2 ken by 6 ken and a half, roughly 3.6 metres by 11.8 metres, and cuts through the whole eastern flank of the building. Those are workshop proportions rather than domestic ones. Read it as the space where a tile maker handled clay, tools and loads, and the plan of the Ozeki Family Main House becomes legible at once.

The Tatami Rooms

Step up from the earth floor and the matted rooms begin: the eight-mat room with its alcove and shelves at the back, then an eight-mat and a six-mat room in the Chukyo module. A veranda half a ken wide runs along the south side and opens toward the garden. Formal reception and working craft sit side by side under one roof, which is the particular pleasure of this house.

The Second-Floor Rails

Look up from outside and the horizontal timbers around the upper windows come into view. Fitting nageshi above and below the window openings tells you the second floor was never treated as a bare loft, a reading that fits its later use for sericulture.

Walk around the building and the storehouse appears to the north-west. Its southern end joins the veranda on the north side of the altar room, so the two structures connect directly. Anyone looking at the Ozeki Family Main House should follow that junction on foot to understand how the compound works.

Visiting

The Ozeki Family Main House is privately owned and remains both a home and a working pottery. The whole building is not open on a fixed schedule, but part of it is open to anyone.

Since April 2024 a section of the house has run as Kissa Wan, a cafe in the old dwelling. It opens Thursday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00, including public holidays, though events occasionally close it. Drinks and sweets arrive on Inuyama ware, so the building and the pottery can be seen in one visit.

The pottery shop on the same grounds, Inuyamayaki Honkamamoto Ozeki Sakujuro Tobo, opens 10:00 to 17:00, with irregular closing days and a break at New Year. 3 tatami rooms in the house and the ground floor of the storehouse are let as gallery space, so exhibitions offer another way in. Painting workshops with the seventh-generation potter run by reservation.

No photography rule appears on the owners' website. Since this is a private home hosting paying visitors, asking on arrival before taking pictures indoors is the safe course.

By train, the site is a 15-minute walk from Meitetsu Inuyama Station and a 12-minute walk from Meitetsu Inuyamayuen Station, uphill and next to Inuyama Naritasan. Drivers will find parking on the grounds, though the private lane at the entrance is narrow and easy to overshoot. Inuyama Castle, whose keep is a National Treasure, and the old merchant street of Hommachi lie a short walk to the west.

Opening days, hours and charges were checked against the official website on 31 August 2026. Confirm current details before travelling.