Sakai Family Residence Main House

About the Sakai Family Residence Main House

The Sakai Family Residence Main House (酒井家住宅主屋, Sakai-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a 2-storey wooden machiya townhouse built in 1910 in Shimofukae-cho, Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2011.

The Sakai Family Residence Main House faces east onto the old Hokkoku Kaidō highway. It served as both the business office of Sakai Shōten, the hemp-yarn merchant that became today's Sakai Ovex, and the family home. It was altered around 1982 and has a building area of 153 m².

A Late Meiji Merchant Frontage

The Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to the lattice-fronted ground floor and the plastered-over upper storey as the marks of a true Machiya.

Sabae City adds that it keeps the traditional townhouse frontage while also showing newer forms of the late Meiji era, giving an orderly façade, and calls it a valuable surviving example of a late Meiji townhouse in Sabae.

Lattice Below, Plaster Above

The house is 8.5 m wide and 12 m deep. Its gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof is entered on the long side (Hirairi) and covered in Sangawara-buki pantiles, with Hisashi canopies at front and back and lean-to Geya roofs along the sides.

At street level the front has projecting Degōshi lattices; above, the walls are sealed in white Shikkui plaster. Fine lattice below and heavy plaster above: that is the face the Sakai Family Residence Main House shows the highway. Fukui Prefecture notes that the high ceilings upstairs belong to the newer style of the very end of the Meiji era.

Downstairs are an office, reception rooms and a family altar room, and because the house was used by the company, an office and a strongroom survive. Upstairs is a tea room among other rooms. According to Sabae City, the everyday living areas have been modernised, but the reception room, the altar room, the courtyard beyond the reception room and the upstairs reception room keep much of their original state.

Seeing the Sakai Family Residence Main House

The Main House faces the old highway, so its frontage can be viewed from the street. Look at the contrast between the ground-floor lattice and the white upper wall.

It is a private home and the interior is not open to the public (checked October 2026). If you stop in the street, be considerate of traffic and residents. Access and background are on the Sakai Family Residence (Sabae) page.