Nakamura Family Residence (Onikoshi, Ichikawa)

What the Nakamura Family Residence Is

The Nakamura Family Residence (中村家住宅) in Onikoshi, Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, is a merchant household's estate on the old Chiba Kaido highway whose seven buildings and two built structures, from an Inari shrine of 1891 and a storehouse of 1893 through to the early Showa era, were entered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 7 October 2014. It is privately owned.

The nine registrations are the main house, the annex, the brick storehouse, the storehouse, the north storehouse and office, the warehouse, the Inari shrine, the air raid shelter, and the gate and stone wall, numbered consecutively from 12-0171 to 12-0179. Living quarters, stores, a factory warehouse, a household shrine, a wartime shelter and the street frontage all survive on one plot, so the family's domestic life and its trade can both be read from the kinds of building that remain.

Several properties across Japan carry the name Nakamura Family Residence. This one is the Nakamura estate in Onikoshi 2-chome, Ichikawa, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs database records under three lot numbers, 2-200-1, 2-200-2 and 2-200-3, depending on the building.

From Horse Fodder to Miso

According to the Chiba Prefectural Board of Education, the Nakamura family built here close to the point where the old Kioroshi Kaido road meets the Chiba Kaido, and in the Meiji era used that position to trade as a supplier of horse fodder to the Imperial Army. In the Taisho era the business turned to brewing miso. By converting warehouses from the fodder years, among other steps, the family ran a large miso works that shipped its product toward Tokyo.

Most of the buildings are placed in the late Meiji era. The north storehouse is late Taisho, and the office and the air raid shelter belong to the early Showa era. The main house and the gate and wall were altered in the early Showa years and the annex in the mid-Showa years. The spread of dates tracks a property that was adjusted each time the business changed direction.

The estate also has a link to the painter Higashiyama Kaii. The chronology published by the Ichikawa City Higashiyama Kaii Memorial Museum records that in 1946 he began lodging on the upper floor of the office at the factory of the Nakamura family, miso brewers in Onikoshi. While living there he showed Afterglow (Zansho) at the third Nitten exhibition in 1947, where it won a special prize, and in 1953 he moved to a new house of his own in Nakayama 1-chome, Ichikawa.

No official source consulted states that the registered office is the very building he lived in. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the registered office to the early Showa era, which fits the timeline, but the identification cannot be confirmed.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The north side of the Nakamura Family Residence meets the Chiba Kaido, and that frontage is closed by a stone gate and wall. The main gate, toward the west, leads to the entrance of the main house; a carriage gate opens beside the office to the east; between them runs a wall of Boshu stone that turns corners as it goes. From the road, this is the first thing you face.

Behind the gates the main house turns its north gable end to the highway, the brick storehouse stands on the corner plot to its west, and the north storehouse and office sit to its east. That row along the road is the public face of the estate.

The annex adjoins the main house at its rear to the south, and the storehouse links the two. Along the southeast of the site the long warehouse used for brewing miso runs north to south, and in the southwest the Inari shrine faces east on a stone base. The air raid shelter shares lot 2-200-3 with the shrine and was built into the garden of the house.

• Main house (late Meiji, altered early Showa; register no. 12-0171)
• Annex (late Meiji, altered mid-Showa; register no. 12-0172)
• Brick storehouse (late Meiji; register no. 12-0173)
• Storehouse (1893; register no. 12-0174)
• North storehouse and office (storehouse late Taisho, office early Showa; register no. 12-0175)
• Warehouse (south section mid-Meiji, moved in the early Showa era; north section late Meiji; register no. 12-0176)
• Inari shrine (1891; register no. 12-0177)
• Air raid shelter (early Showa; register no. 12-0178)
• Gate and stone wall (late Meiji, altered early Showa; register no. 12-0179)

Eight of the nine were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The air raid shelter alone was registered on the ground that it would not be easy to reproduce. The shelter and the gate and wall each count as one structure and the rest as one building each, which gives the total of seven buildings and two structures.

Visiting and Getting There

The Nakamura Family Residence is a private home. Neither Ichikawa City's nor the Chiba Prefectural Board of Education's pages on the property mention public opening or visits by arrangement (checked 25 September 2026). Plan on seeing the exterior from outside the grounds only.

The north side facing the highway is the easiest to read from the public road: the gates and stone wall, the north gable of the main house, the brick storehouse on the corner and the Western-style front of the office all line up along it. The annex, storehouse, warehouse, Inari shrine and shelter lie to the south or deeper inside the plot and are hard to make out over the wall.

No notice forbidding photography of the exterior from the road was found. The house is lived in, though, so avoid shots that pry through the gateway. The Chiba Kaido carries heavy traffic, and if you stop to look, choose a spot where you are not blocking people on foot.

The nearest stations are Keisei-Nakayama on the Keisei Main Line and Shimosa-Nakayama on the JR Sobu Line, each about 5 minutes on foot to the west. From Onigoe Station on the Keisei Main Line it is about 8 minutes on foot to the southeast. There is no visitor parking.