Kabashima Family Residence

About the Kabashima Family Residence

The Kabashima Family Residence (椛島家住宅, Kabashima-ke Jūtaku) in Nijotanaka, Itoshima City, Fukuoka Prefecture, is a landowner's estate built up between about 1897 and 1919, and its main house, barn, storehouse, two shrines and 3 sets of gates and fences were registered as 8 Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on May 2, 2017.

The house was built by the Mitsuiki (満生), the largest landholders in Nijotanaka, and the Itoshima tourism association still lists it as the former Mitsuiki Family Residence. It later passed to the Kabashima family; the official site's timeline dates the purchase to 2014. The Kabashima Family Residence remains a family home and opens for limited seasons as a small private museum of art in an old house.

Itoshima City repeats a local account of how wealthy the Mitsuiki were: Ikisan Station on the JR Chikuhi Line, opened by the Kitakyushu Railway, is said to have been built with a donation from the family so that rice from their fields could be shipped to Hakata. The story is told, not documented. What anyone can confirm is the walk: the station is about 5 minutes from the gate.

8 Registrations, 9 Structures

All 8 parts of the Kabashima Family Residence were entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on the same day, under consecutive numbers 40-0140 to 40-0147. Every one was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The weight falls less on any single building than on the way house, outbuildings, gates and fences together make up the view of the estate.

Dates of construction are as follows. Only the storehouse belongs to the Taishō era.

• Main house: about 1897, renovated about 2008
• Koin (barn): late Meiji period (1898 to 1912), renovated 2015
• Storehouse: 1919
• Shrine, small shrine, south gate and fence, east and north gates and fence, garden gate and fence: late Meiji period (1898 to 1912)

Because one registration covers both the east and the north gate, the owners count the buildings as 9.

Layout of the Kabashima Family Residence

The Kabashima Family Residence faces south. Following Itoshima City's description, you pass through the south gate with the main house and the garden gate straight ahead, the burial mound on your left and the koin, the former barn, on your right. The east and north gates and their fence continue from the barn's east wall and run north along the east edge of the grounds. The main house sits at the center of the plot facing south, its great entrance door (ōdoguchi) directly opposite the south gate.

Northwest of the main house, a covered corridor leads from the Buddhist altar room to the storehouse. Northeast of the house stands the shrine, and further northeast again a miniature shrine. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the pair as guarding the kimon, the northeast "demon gate" that Japanese geomancy treats as the unlucky direction. The garden gate and fence curve from the front of the main house around the inner garden before the rear parlor, dividing it from the forecourt.

One discrepancy should be noted. The Agency's entry for the koin places it in the southwest corner, but Itoshima City and the Agency's own entry for the east gates (whose fence runs north from the barn's northeast corner along the east side) both put it on the east. This site follows the latter.

An Estate Beside a 4th-Century Tomb

The grounds of the Kabashima Family Residence touch Ikisan Chōshizuka Kofun (一貴山銚子塚古墳), the largest keyhole-shaped burial mound in the Itoshima area. Itoshima City gives the mound a length of 103 meters and dates it to the late 4th century.

The Mitsuiki regarded the mound as the tomb of their ancestors and kept it as part of their garden. In autumn 2025 the present owners completed a dry landscape garden that borrows the mound as its backdrop. The wooded slope pressing in on the left as you enter is the result of that long, private stewardship.

Visiting the Kabashima Family Residence

The Kabashima Family Residence is still lived in and is not open on a regular basis. According to the official site (checked September 28, 2026), the buildings open during exhibitions held mainly in spring and autumn, and outside those periods the gardens are closed as well.

In autumn 2026 an exhibition of Tsukioka Kōgyo's Noh prints runs on Saturdays and Sundays from October 10 to December 6, open 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., admission 500 yen. The burial mound garden is open free of charge during the exhibition. Dates and days change with each exhibition, so check the official site before you go.

The 2025 visitor leaflet asks guests not to take photographs inside the house. The Itoshima tourism association asks groups of 10 or more to contact the house in advance.

The nearest station is Ikisan on the JR Chikuhi Line, about 5 minutes on foot. Head for the wooded mound and enter by the south gate on open days. There is space for about 4 cars in front of the south gate. Following a change in street addressing, the Kabashima Family Residence is now at 4-2-1 Nijotanaka, Itoshima (formerly Nijotanaka 101).