A Farmhouse That Came Down from the Mountains
The Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence, Main House (越前古窯博物館旧水野九右衛門家住宅（旧水野家住宅主屋）, also written Kyū Mizuno-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey wooden farmhouse at Ozowara in Echizen Town, Fukui Prefecture, built in 1835 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 10 May 2018.
It did not begin life here. The house was dismantled in Kumatani, a hill hamlet in the same town, and reassembled in 2017 inside the Echizen Pottery Village, a few steps from the kiln sites that gave the museum its name. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes it simply as a farmhouse relocated from a mountain settlement.
Walk up to the front and the shape declares itself. The main roof is gabled and you enter from the gable end, the arrangement Japanese carpenters call kirizuma-zukuri tsuma-iri. On either side of that entrance the building pushes forward into two short wings, and the resulting silhouette is known locally as ryōsode-zukuri, literally "both sleeves." The walls are shinkabe, meaning the structural posts are left visible against white plaster, with a band of dark boarding along the base to take splashes of rain and snow. Building area is 243 square metres under a tiled roof.
Inside, the plan reads from front to back. First a packed-earth doma alongside a boarded room, then four living rooms set out in a regular grid that carpenters call seikei yomadori, and finally, projecting from the rear wall, a raised alcove for the Buddhist altar and a nando storeroom. The house was altered in the middle of the Meiji era, roughly the 1880s and 1890s, and moved again in 2017.
One point worth flagging for anyone checking the national database: the record gives the construction date as Tenpō 6, which converts to 1835, while the adjacent Western-year field reads 1935. Every other source, including the documentation behind the 2018 listing, supports 1835.
Why a Relocated House Still Counts as Heritage
Japan runs two parallel systems for old buildings, and this house sits in the lighter of the two. Important Cultural Properties are designated and tightly controlled. Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, the category applied here as registration number 18-193 in the ninetieth round of registrations, carry a gentler obligation: owners must notify the government before major changes, and in exchange they are encouraged to keep using the building. That is precisely why you can book a room in this one by the hour.
The registration criterion cited is that the building is a model of its type. The Council for Cultural Affairs report of 9 March 2018 put the reasoning plainly: the two-sleeve form conveys the pattern of the upper-ranking farmhouses of this district, and the Mizuno family were an old household of village-headman rank whose previous generation was well known for research into Echizen ware.
That previous generation was Mizuno Kyūemon (1921 to 1989), and the museum around the house exists because of him. Born in Sabae, he married into a Kumatani family in 1945 and began picking up potsherds from the paddies and hillsides near his own home. Until the 1940s the local ware went by several names and was known to almost nobody outside the district. After the ceramics scholar Koyama Fujio surveyed the kiln sites in 1942 and published his paper on the old kilns of Echizen in 1947, the pottery gained a national profile as the sixth of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns, alongside Seto, Tokoname, Shigaraki, Tanba and Bizen.
Mizuno spent forty years on the subject, funded a private museum of his own in 1968, and reconstructed a medieval kiln to fire it experimentally. He died in 1989 while preparing the third firing. His collection, roughly 37,000 items, is itself a Registered Tangible Cultural Property under the name Fukui Prefecture Ceramic Materials. The prefecture now owns the house.
What There Is to Do Inside It
The Echizen Ancient Kiln Museum opened on 28 October 2017 and has three parts: an exhibition hall for the Mizuno collection, this house, and two tea rooms called Tenshindō and Tenshin'an, designed by the sukiya architect Nakamura Masao in honour of Okakura Tenshin, the Meiji-era thinker who wrote The Book of Tea and who had Fukui roots.
The house is not roped off. Its four eight-mat rooms open into one another when the sliding fusuma are lifted out, giving a single space of thirty-two mats, and one of them has a sunken hearth cut for tea. Groups rent the rooms for tea gatherings, dance and music practice, seminars and small markets. In late February a display of about five hundred Shōwa and Heisei-era Hina dolls fills the interior, free to visit.
Opening hours are 9:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:30. Closing days are Mondays other than public holidays, the day following a public holiday when that day is not itself a weekend or holiday, and 28 December to 4 January. The permanent exhibition in the collection hall costs 300 yen, or 240 yen per person for groups of thirty or more; students through high school, visitors aged 70 and over, and holders of a disability certificate with one companion enter the permanent exhibition free. The tatami rooms in the house rent at 400 yen per room per hour, Tenshin'an at 900 yen and Tenshindō at 2,500 yen. A bowl of matcha is 800 yen with a fresh sweet or 500 yen with a dry one. Photography rules vary with what is happening in the rooms that day, so ask at reception.
Getting here without a car takes a little planning. From Takefu Station on the Hapi-Line Fukui railway, take the Fukutetsu bus on the Takefu to Echizen Coast route bound for Kareizaki and get off at Tōgei-mura-guchi, about thirty minutes. The Sabaura route from Shinmei Station takes about the same time. Drivers reach the village in roughly thirty minutes from either Takefu or Sabae interchange, and the Echizen Pottery Village car park holds 250 vehicles. Give yourself extra time for the sculpture park outside, where works by Okamoto Tarō and Isamu Noguchi sit on the lawn.
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Q&A
- Can visitors go inside the Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence at the Echizen Ancient Kiln Museum, and what does it cost?
- Yes. The house is open as part of the museum from 9:00 to 17:00, last admission 16:30. Simply looking around the house does not require the exhibition ticket; the collection hall's permanent exhibition is 300 yen. Renting one of the four tatami rooms for an event costs 400 yen per room per hour.
- Where did the Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence originally stand, and when was it moved?
- It was built in 1835 in Kumatani, a hill hamlet within present-day Echizen Town, and was relocated to the Echizen Pottery Village at Ozowara in 2017 when the museum was being built. The national record notes an alteration in the middle of the Meiji era as well.
- What does ryōsode-zukuri mean in the case of the Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence?
- The term means "two-sleeve construction." The house has a gabled roof with the entrance on the gable end, and short wings project forward on the left and right of that entrance, like sleeves on either side of a body. It is a regional pattern found among the wealthier farmhouses of this part of Echizen.
- Is the Mizuno Kyūemon Collection displayed near the Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence?
- It is, in the museum's collection hall a short walk from the house. The roughly 37,000 pieces gathered by Mizuno Kyūemon are registered nationally as Fukui Prefecture Ceramic Materials, and the permanent display traces Echizen ware from the Heian period onward.
- How do you reach the Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence from Takefu Station?
- Take the Fukutetsu bus bound for Kareizaki on the Takefu to Echizen Coast route and alight at Tōgei-mura-guchi, roughly thirty minutes. By car it is about thirty minutes from Takefu or Sabae interchange on the Hokuriku Expressway, with parking for 250 cars at the pottery village.
Basic Information
| Name | Echizen Ancient Kiln Museum, Former Mizuno Kyūemon Residence (Former Mizuno Family Residence Main House) |
|---|---|
| Location | 107-1-169 Ozowara, Echizen Town, Nyū County, Fukui Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration number 18-193 |
| Year Designated | Registered 10 May 2018 (90th registration round) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Wood-framed, two storeys, tiled roof, building area 243 square metres |
| Owner | Fukui Prefecture |
| Public Access | Open as part of the museum, 9:00 to 17:00 (last admission 16:30). Closed Mondays except public holidays, the day after a public holiday, and 28 December to 4 January. Rooms available for hire. |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00012329
- Cultural Heritage Online
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/610573
- Echizen Ancient Kiln Museum, Fukui Prefectural Ceramics Museum
- https://www.tougeikan.jp/museum/koyou/
- Council for Cultural Affairs report on registered structures, 9 March 2018 (PDF)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/pdf/r1392281_30.pdf
- Echizen Town Tourism Association, museum listing
- https://www.town-echizen.jp/spot/spot01Detail.php?id=511
Last verified: 2026.08.24