Hebinohana Goten

A landowner's villa above a garden

Hebinohana Goten is a villa in Motomiya, Motomiya City, Fukushima Prefecture, where two buildings of the late Meiji period were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 20 December 1996. The property belongs to Ito Shoji Co., Ltd.

The two are the main building and the kurazashiki, a storehouse fitted out as a formal room, registered as 07-0005 and 07-0006. In Fukushima those numbers follow directly after the four at Mukaitaki.

They stand on high ground inside the garden now called Janohana, the garden of flowers and history. Motomiya City records that the villa was built for the Ito family, wealthy landowners of the old town of Motomiya. The house does not sit in the garden so much as look down on it.

Built out of carving and painted panels

The main building is two storeys of timber under a sheet-metal roof, covering 253 square metres. Gabled dormers and a cusped gable break the roofline, the entrance carries fine carving, painted panels survive inside, and choice and oversized timbers are used throughout.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a tradition that it took eight years to build. Motomiya City puts the figure at ten. Either way, the effort spent here was of a different order from an ordinary house.

The criteria differ between the two. The main building was listed as something not easily reproduced, the kurazashiki as a model of design: the first for its materials and carving, the second for how completely it realises its type.

The Agency's structural field describes the kurazashiki as two storeys of timber with a sheet-metal roof, while its own description calls it a Dozo-zukuri storehouse. The two entries disagree, so both are given here.

The man who built it

Hebinohana Goten was built for Wataru Ito, a major landowner of the old town of Motomiya who served as its mayor and as a member of the Fukushima prefectural assembly. The Fukushima Minyu newspaper reports that he had work pulled down and redone whenever it displeased him, and rebuilt parts of the house more than once. The eight years recorded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the ten given by Motomiya City are both consequences of that method.

The carving is said to have been commissioned from a sculptor in Nihonmatsu. Inside hang framed inscriptions and calligraphy by Hirobumi Ito and other figures of the Meiji government, which says something about the company the household kept.

The house passed out of Ito hands in 1964 to Ito Shoji, the present owner, and opened as a garden the following year. The Janohana garden of today grew out of that.

A kurazashiki of the northeast

The kurazashiki is small, 43 square metres, and inside it is finished like the main building, with painted panels and the same unusual timbers.

Houses in the northeast of Japan often contain a kurazashiki: a fireproof storehouse fitted out not for goods but for receiving people. The example here is singled out for how richly the interior is treated.

Seen one after the other, the two buildings show the same materials and the same hands at two scales. What fills 253 square metres in the main building is compressed into 43 square metres here.

Visiting

Admission to the Janohana garden covers entry to Hebinohana Goten. It costs 1,000 yen for adults from high-school age and 500 yen for children from primary-school age. The ticket works as a free pass, valid for repeat visits within the same year, and group rates apply for parties of 20 and of 40.

Opening hours change with the season. From 1 April to 25 October the garden opens 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m.; from 26 October to 30 November, 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with last entry at 4:00 p.m.; from 1 December to 31 March, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with last entry at 2:30 p.m. It closes from 28 December to 6 January. In winter it may close at short notice for weather or staffing, so telephone ahead if you are coming a long way.

Dogs may enter the garden but not the listed buildings. Personal photography is free; commercial shoots and drone flights require an application and a fee, and photography inside the villa and its garden needs separate permission.

The address is 38 Janohana, Motomiya, Motomiya City. It is about 8 minutes by car from Motomiya Station on the JR Tohoku Main Line, and about 8 minutes from the Motomiya interchange of the Tohoku Expressway. Parking is free, with space for 300 cars and 10 coaches.

This information was checked on 17 September 2026. Hours and fees change, so confirm on the garden's own site before travelling.