Former Kurauchi Family Residence

A coal magnate's country house

The Former Kurauchi Family Residence (旧蔵内家住宅, Kyū-Kurauchi-ke Jūtaku) in Kamifukano, Chikujo-machi, Fukuoka Prefecture, is the ancestral home of a coal-mining family, a main house of 1887 enlarged in the Taisho era into 12 buildings that were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2002. Locally it is signposted as Kyū-Kurauchi-tei, often written with the older character 藏, and that is the name you will see on the town's leaflets and at the gate.

The house sits among rice fields where the coastal plain starts to climb toward the hills. At its center is the east-facing Main House. Around it, the Grand Entrance Wing, Reception Wing, Tea Room, Zashiki Wing and Great Hall Wing step back one after another toward the garden, while a long treasure storehouse closes the west side and a rice storehouse and utility storehouse line the south. Other coal barons built their mansions in the mining towns of Chikuho; the Kurauchi chose their home village instead, some distance from the pits that paid for it.

The sources disagree on when the house was begun. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database dates the Main House and Reception Wing to 1887 on the evidence of a completion photograph, while Chikujo Town's guide puts the Main House, the Reception Wing and the first garden at around 1906. The individual building pages on this site give both dates.

The Kurauchi and their mines

According to the town's history, the Kurauchi descended from retainers of the Utsunomiya (Kii) clan, medieval lords of Buzen Province, and took up farming in Fukano village after their lords fell. The family name already appears on a stone lantern of 1721 and a torii gate of 1770 at Kifune Shrine next door.

Kurauchi Jirosaku, born in 1847, opened his first coal workings at Gotoji in Tagawa District in 1885 and, with his adopted son Yasufusa, expanded into larger pits across the coalfield. Kurauchi Mining was incorporated in 1916 with Yasufusa as president, and by 1919 its output is reported to have ranked sixth in Japan. The great enlargement of the house began the same year the company was founded, and the principal rooms were complete once the Grand Entrance Wing went up in 1920.

Yasufusa died in 1921, the year the house was finished, and Jirosaku followed in 1923. Under Jirobei the family sold its collieries in 1939 and moved into metal mining, chiefly tin at the Obira mine in Oita Prefecture, until that mine closed in 1959.

How the estate fits together

You enter from the south. Beside the entrance stands a small privy with natural log posts and a round window, easy to walk past but one of the 12 registered buildings. Straight ahead the Grand Entrance Wing faces east, and just to its northeast a Middle Gate separates the forecourt from the garden on the north side.

Tickets are sold inside the Grand Entrance Wing. From there the route runs through the Main House, the Reception Wing, the Tea Room, the Zashiki Wing and the Great Hall Wing, a sequence of formal rooms facing the garden. Town curators explain that the Taisho additions were deliberately staggered so that each room frames the pond and its rockwork from a different angle, where the Meiji garden had been designed to be seen mainly from the reception room.

West of the Main House lies the Kitchen Wing, and behind it, centered on the west edge of the property, the ten-bay Treasure Storehouse. Along the road on the south run the Rice Storehouse and the Storehouse, the latter pierced by a service gate. Walk the perimeter and the plan becomes clear: guest rooms to the east and north, housekeeping and storage to the west and south.

The master carpenter for the Taisho work is recorded as Nakae Kuju of Yamada village, now part of Buzen City, with Urano Yahei as gardener and Nagano Kumataro as stonemason. Local granite was used for the approach walls, the stone bridge and the garden rocks.

Protection status

The 12 buildings were registered together on February 14, 2002, under consecutive numbers 40-0019 to 40-0030. The registration criteria differ by building: some for their contribution to the historic landscape, some as models of design, and the treasure storehouse as something that would be hard to reproduce.

The garden, listed as the Former Kurauchi Garden, was designated a national Place of Scenic Beauty on March 10, 2015, and the designation was extended on February 9, 2017, to take in Kifune Shrine, the approach path and the statue plaza. Town materials also describe the residence as a building designated by Fukuoka Prefecture.

Visiting

Chikujo Town runs the house as a public facility. It opens from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with last entry at 4:00 p.m., and closes on Wednesdays (opening instead when Wednesday is a national holiday) and from December 28 to January 4. Admission is 310 yen for adults and high school students and 100 yen for elementary and junior high pupils, reduced to 250 yen and 80 yen for groups of 20 or more. For a further 300 yen you can take sencha and a local sweet in one of the rooms.

The nearest station is Tsuiki on the JR Nippo Line. From there a taxi or local bus takes about 10 minutes; the bus runs on the Sawada line to the Kamifukano stop, a few minutes' walk away, but services are sparse and the town suggests phoning the house for times. Drivers can reach it in about 6 minutes from Tsuiki Interchange on the Higashi-Kyushu Expressway. Parking is free, on a lot beside the prefectural road and on a second lot about 220 metres further in.

Because the buildings are historic structures, the interior is not barrier-free and wheelchairs cannot be used inside, although there is an accessible public toilet at the entrance. Smoking and open flames are prohibited on the grounds. The official guide says nothing about photography indoors, so ask at the desk before taking pictures.