Amano Family Residence Main House

About the Amano Family Residence Main House

The Amano Family Residence Main House (天野家住宅主屋, Amano-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a timber house built in 1911 at the centre of the Amano family estate in Mimigai, Odaka Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018. It was altered in 1927.

The Amano Family Residence Main House is the largest of the estate's six registered structures, with a building area of 234 m² under a tiled roof. A two-storey living block forms the core, with an entrance porch on the south front, a single-storey kitchen wing on the east, and a bath and toilet projecting at the back.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Amano Family Residence Main House was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for its contribution to the historic landscape, under registration number 07-0202, the first of the estate's six numbers.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a high-quality Japanese-style house representative of the area. The Council for Cultural Affairs, in its report of 20 July 2018, went further: it singled out the imposing exterior and the fine reception rooms on the front of the ground floor and on the upper floor.

Two dates are on record, 1911 for construction and 1927 for an alteration. That second date matches the year the stone gate and the concrete boundary walls went up, so the Amano Main House was reworked during the same campaign that gave the estate its formal front. Published sources do not say what the 1927 work changed.

What to Look For at the Amano Main House

The living block of the Amano Family Residence Main House has a two-storey irimoya roof, the hipped-and-gabled form common on substantial Japanese houses. A gabled entrance porch projects from the centre of the front, and its roof bows gently upward, a curve called mukuri. Many temple and shrine roofs sweep the other way, curving up at the eaves; the convex mukuri reads softer and more domestic. Set against the big irimoya roof behind it, that porch is the face of the house.

Inside, the living block is laid out as two rows of two rooms. The formal Zashiki rooms, where guests were received, take the front of the ground floor and the upper floor.

On the east side, the single-storey kitchen wing joins the two-storey block, so the roofline steps down from east to west across the house. The bath and toilet project from the rear.

A separate outdoor toilet stands east of the Amano Family Residence Main House, so the family kept a second toilet in its own building as well as the one at the back of the house. The sources do not say how the two were used.

Seeing the Amano Family Residence Main House

The Amano Family Residence Main House belongs to a private home and its interior is not open. No viewing of the reception rooms had been announced as of October 2026.

The house stands in the middle of the plot, behind a front line of stone wall, concrete wall, gate and two storehouses. How much of the roof and porch of the Amano Main House can be seen from outside has not been checked on site. Please stay off the property and photograph only from the public road. Directions are on the Amano Family Residence page.