Former Kinoshita Family Residence (Kitagocho, Katsuyama

A Headman's Farmhouse on the Western Edge of Katsuyama

The Former Kinoshita Residence sits among rice fields on the western side of Katsuyama, a city in the mountainous interior of Fukui Prefecture. It is a large thatched farmhouse built for a family that served as shōya, the village headman of the Kitagō district, during the closing decades of the Edo period. The roof ridge was raised in 1836 (Tenpō 7) and the house was finished around 1839 (Tenpō 10).

The building has an irimoya (hip-and-gable) thatched roof and is entered from the gable end, a layout local builders called tsumairi. Its main block measures 17.7 metres deep and 9.6 metres across the front, with separate wings projecting from the east and west faces. The Kinoshita family eventually left, and the house is now owned and maintained by the City of Katsuyama, which opens it to visitors free of charge.

Why the House Was Designated

The residence was named a national Important Cultural Property on 29 June 2010. What earned it that status is the way it carries a regional building tradition to its fullest expression. Farmhouses across the old Echizen region (the northern part of present-day Fukui) were built around what scholars call the mae-hiroma, or front-hall, plan. The Kinoshita house belongs to the most developed stage of that tradition, classified locally as Echizen Type II.

Inside, the plan reads as two rows of six rooms. A wide board-floored hall faces the entrance. Behind it sit four eight-mat rooms arranged in a grid the Japanese describe as the ta-no-ji pattern, after the character for "rice paddy". Further back are a Butsudan-no-ma, the room for the family Buddhist altar, and a Bōzu-beya, a room kept for a visiting priest. The projecting east and west wings give the front a symmetrical, winged silhouette known as ryōsode-zukuri, literally "both-sleeves construction".

The house also stands out for who built it. Carpenters from the workshops at Eiheiji, the great Sōtō Zen temple a short distance to the west, handled the construction, and the precision of the joinery reflects their training. Six documents recording the building work survive and were designated together with the house. They name the dates and trace how the project moved from ridge-raising to completion. Only seven thatched farmhouses in Fukui hold national Important Cultural Property status, and this is one of them.

What to Look For on a Visit

Step through the entrance and the first space is the niwa, a combined earthen floor and raised board floor spanned by heavy, blackened beams. A sunken hearth, the irori, is still lit every day, so the smell of woodsmoke and the sight of a working fire remain part of the experience rather than a museum reconstruction.

Beyond the hall, the four matted rooms open onto one another. The finest of them keeps a tokonoma alcove and an engawa veranda that looks out over the garden. The half-dismantling repair carried out between 2015 and 2018 exposed details worth slowing down for: on some timbers the adze finish is rough and angled, while on display pieces the same tool left a deliberate, decorative pattern. The work cost roughly 326 million yen and the house reopened in April 2019.

The Iwaya River runs close by, and the setting shifts with the seasons. Fireflies appear along the water in early summer; deep snow surrounds the thatch in winter.

Getting There and Nearby Sights

The house is about ten minutes by car from the Katsuyama interchange on the Chūbu-Jūkan Expressway. There is parking for twenty cars and a restroom on site, though the lane in is narrow and easy to miss from the main road.

Katsuyama rewards a full day. The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, one of the largest of its kind in the country, is the area's best-known draw. The mossy precincts of Heisenji Hakusan Shrine, a designated Historic Site, lie in the same direction, as do the Echizen Daibutsu at Seidaiji and the Katsuyama Castle Museum. If you come in late February, the town holds the Sagichō fire festival, with paper-decorated floats and bonfires.