Former Hongo Residence Main House: The Floor Plan of a Rice Fortune in Snow Country
The plan of this house reads almost like a diagram of rural wealth in northern Japan around 1900. Three formal reception rooms run in a line down the east side. A Buddhist altar room and a storage chamber occupy the middle. On the west sits the oe, the wide living room where the family actually spent its days. Cutting through the western and southern half is a dirt-floored passage that turns at a right angle, and the entrance opens off it.
This is the main house of the Hongo family, completed in Meiji 33 (1900) in the town of Kakumagawa, now part of Daisen City in Akita Prefecture. Timber-framed, one storey with a partial second floor, roofed in sheet iron, it covers a building area of 396 square metres.
Kakumagawa sits at the centre of the Yokote Basin, where the Yokote River joins the Omono. Before railways, the Omono carried rice downstream to the port of Tsuchizaki on the Sea of Japan, and Kakumagawa served as one of the river's key inland harbours. Merchant landlords grew up around that traffic. The Hongo family was the largest of them.
By Taisho 13 (1924), the family and its associated company held roughly 345 hectares of farmland. A directory of large Akita landowners compiled in Meiji 23 (1890) ranked the Hongo house third in the prefecture, behind the Ikeda family of the old Takanashi village and the Tsujis of Akita city.
Why the House Carries National Registration
On 29 November 2016, the Agency for Cultural Affairs entered the main house on the national register of tangible cultural properties as number 05-0212. Three other buildings on the same grounds were registered the same day.
Registration is worth explaining, because English-language writing about Japanese heritage often blurs it together with designation. The register was created in 1996 as a lighter-touch instrument, aimed at buildings roughly fifty years old or older that have shaped the landscape people live in. Owners notify the government before altering a registered building rather than seeking permission, and they keep far more freedom than the owners of a Designated Important Cultural Property. The system was built for structures that need to stay in use to survive: shopfronts, warehouses, private homes.
Each registered building is entered under one of three criteria, and the four Hongo buildings do not share the same one. The main house qualifies as a model of design. The reasoning is that it demonstrates, with unusual clarity, how domestic architecture developed in this corner of the country as the Meiji economy took hold.
Records name the designer as Komine Okiyoshi, with Yonezawa Juzo supervising construction and Terashima Shoemon serving as master carpenter. Named craftsmen and a firm construction date are less common than one might expect for houses of this period, and they raise the documentary value of the building considerably.
What to Look for Inside
Begin with the ceiling height. Rooms in a house of this class could have been kept low and easy to heat; instead the interior rises, giving the reception rooms a formality suited to a family that entertained officials and creditors.
Then look up in the earth-floored passage. The doma here is generous, and clerestory windows set high in the wall bring light down into it. Both features answer the same problem. Snow in the Yokote Basin regularly buries the ground floor windows for months, so work that in a milder region would happen in the yard moves indoors, and light has to be caught from above the drift line.
The right-angled turn in the passage repays a moment's attention as well. It separates the household's working circulation from the route a guest would take toward the eastern reception rooms, without requiring a second entrance.
Step outside on the north side and the garden opens up. A coloured garden design drawn in Taisho 11 (1922) by Nagaoka Yasuhei, often called the founder of modern Japanese landscape design, survives in the family's papers. Nagaoka also worked on the Ikeda family garden elsewhere in Daisen City, now a designated Place of Scenic Beauty. How much of the present planting follows his drawing has not been fully established, and the city has flagged the garden's history as a subject for further survey.
One historical note deserves care. When the Meiji Emperor toured the northeast in 1881, the Hongo house served as his temporary lodging and the head of the family was granted a private audience. That happened nineteen years before the present main house went up, so the rooms a visitor walks through today are not the rooms the emperor used.
The ninth head of the family, Hongo Hajime, gave the registered buildings and their grounds to Daisen City in March 2017. Regular seasonal opening began in 2019.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the main house?
- Yes. The house opens to the public each year from late April to mid-November, from 9:00 to 16:00, with last entry at 15:30. It closes on Mondays, or the next weekday when Monday is a public holiday. Admission is free. The site closes over the snow season, so check the Daisen City website before travelling.
- What is an oe?
- It is the everyday living room of a farmhouse or landlord's house in this region, usually placed next to the earth-floored work area and used for meals, family gatherings and informal business. Unlike the formal reception rooms, it was a room the family used constantly rather than one reserved for guests.
- How do I get there from Omagari Station?
- By taxi it is roughly 14 minutes and 8 kilometres. Iizume Station is closer at about 7 minutes and 4 kilometres. Parking is available beside the former Arakawa Residence just south of the site, with space for 36 cars and 2 buses.
- Is a guided tour available in English?
- Paid guided tours are run by a local company, Kabushiki Gaisha Kakumagawa, and the tour is the only way to see the interiors of the storehouses on this site and at the neighbouring Arakawa and Kitajima houses. Guiding is conducted in Japanese, so visitors who need English should arrange support in advance.
- What else is worth seeing nearby?
- Kakumagawa retains the street pattern of a castle-era town, including the hooked lanes of the samurai quarter. Daisen City also holds the Hotta no Saku fort site, the Ikeda family garden and the main hall of Koshio Shrine, all nationally recognised.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Hongo Residence Main House (Kyu Hongo-ke Jutaku Shuoku) |
|---|---|
| Location | 19 Nishinaka-kamimachi, Kakumagawa-cho, Daisen City, Akita Prefecture |
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structures) |
| Registration date | 29 November 2016 (85th round of registration) |
| Registration number | 05-0212 |
| Registration criterion | A model of design |
| Date of construction | Meiji 33 (1900) |
| Structure | Timber frame, single storey with partial second storey, sheet iron roof |
| Building area | 396 square metres |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Builders | Design by Komine Okiyoshi; supervision by Yonezawa Juzo; master carpenter Terashima Shoemon |
| Owner | Daisen City |
| Public access | Open late April to mid-November, 9:00 to 16:00 (last entry 15:30). Closed Mondays. Free admission. |
| Enquiries | Cultural Properties Division, Daisen City (Tel. 0187-63-8972) |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Former Hongo Residence Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00011236
- Cultural Heritage Online: Former Hongo Residence Main House
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/245351
- Daisen City: Registered Tangible Cultural Property, Former Hongo Residence
- https://www.city.daisen.lg.jp/archive/contents-11562
- Daisen City: Public Opening of the Former Hongo Residence
- https://www.city.daisen.lg.jp/archive/contents-9764
Last verified: 2026.07.22