Former Hirai Family Residence Shop and Main House

A shop-house facing the old main street

The Former Hirai Family Residence Shop and Main House (旧平井家住宅店舗兼主屋) on Shinmachi-dōri in Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture, is a merchant's shop and dwelling of the mid-Meiji period (between 1883 and 1897), registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 1, 2016 (number 12-0188).

The Former Hirai Family Residence Shop and Main House faces east onto Shinmachi-dōri, once the main street of the castle town, on the corner where a side road comes in from the south. It is a 2-storey timber Machiya with its ridge running north to south and the entrance on the long side (Hirairi), under a gabled roof of pantiles. The building area is 83 m². In the usual way of castle-town merchants, the street side of the ground floor was the shop and the back rooms and upper floor were the family's home.

The Hirai family's earlier house burned in a town fire of 1886, and this one is said to have been built to replace it. No ridge tablet has been found, but a deed of 1892 already describes a 2-storey timber building, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the mid-Meiji period.

An open shopfront

The street front of the Former Hirai Family Residence Shop and Main House is the mise, the shop room, built to open wide onto the road. Traces remain of agedo, shutters that were hooked up overhead to open the shop, so during trading hours the whole frontage could be thrown open to customers.

Behind the shop are a 6-mat sitting room (chanoma), a boarded room, a 4-mat room and the entrance. Upstairs are an 8-mat room, an 8-mat boarded room, a 6-mat former maid's room and a 6-mat room that served as a study. An oval sink from the years when the family ran a sake shop, from the late Meiji period onward, is reported to survive under the shop eaves.

Posts and beams around the shop carry many old joint holes, showing that the shop layout was changed several times. In the cupboard of the sitting room, marks of treads and risers from a former staircase have been found. The family altar once stood beside that cupboard and was moved when the parlor wing was added in 1931.

Holding the street corner

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the building stands at a key point on the old road and contributes to the historic townscape of the former castle town. Its 2-storey eaves line and the white walls of the side storehouse next door close off the view of Shinmachi-dōri at the T-junction.

The exterior keeps its Meiji shopfront, while the interior shows layers of change from the sake shop years and the post-war period when the front was let to tenants. When Sakura City called for a business to lease the house in 2026, it made keeping the registered facade a condition.

Visiting

The front of the Former Hirai Family Residence Shop and Main House is right on Shinmachi-dōri, so you can see it from the pavement at any time. From across the street the long eaves and the width of the shop opening read most clearly. Photographing from the public road is fine, but the building sits right at the edge of the pavement, so keep out of the way of traffic.

The interior is normally closed and is opened only on occasion, during events such as the autumn festival. That is the only chance to step into the shop and sitting room. The history of the whole property and directions are on the Former Hirai Family Residence page.