Matsumoto Family Residence

A tea house and a study at Nakanosaku

The Matsumoto Family Residence (松本家住宅, Matsumoto-ke Jūtaku) is an old family estate in Nakanosaku, Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, where a tea house and a detached study, both built in 1945, were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 11 December 1998.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Matsumotos have been sake brewers since 1835. What was registered is not the main house but two small single-storey, tile-roofed buildings: the tea house in the northeast corner of the grounds and the detached house joined to its west side.

Iwaki City has eight registered buildings, and these two were the first in the city to be listed, according to the municipal list as of September 2019.

A Japanese tea house beside a Western-style study

The two buildings stand side by side yet could hardly be more different. The tea house, under a gabled roof, joins a formal eight-mat reception room with shoin-style fittings and a Tokonoma alcove one and a half bays wide, a six-mat tea room with a sunken hearth, and a three-mat Mizuya preparation room. A board on the south gable reads Ichitarō-an.

The detached house has a hipped roof and is built around a ten-mat Western-style room, wrapped by a veranda and a corridor. Its bookshelves and bay windows were there from the start, and the Agency describes it as purpose-built as a study.

One building for receiving guests over tea, one for the head of the house and his books. Two sides of a brewing family's domestic life sit next to each other here, each given a building of its own.

The builder, and why the pair was listed

For the detached house, the Agency names the master carpenter as Ōtsuka Momotarō of Hachiōji, in western Tokyo. The name places the work in the hands of a craftsman from well outside Iwaki.

The registration numbers are 07-0026 for the tea house and 07-0027 for the detached house, and both were listed as models of design. The Agency calls the tea house plain in manner but finely made, a good example of a detached building with a tea room, and values the study as a surviving trace of the everyday culture of an old family.

Visiting

The Matsumoto Family Residence is a private home, and no public opening had been announced as of October 2026. Both buildings stand inside the grounds, so plan on entering neither the property nor the rooms.

Published sources do not say how much of the two buildings can be seen from the road. If you are in the area, remember that this is someone's home: do not linger at the gate or peer over the boundary, and keep any photographs to what can be taken from the public street.

Getting there

The residence lies about 8 kilometres east of Izumi Station on the JR Jōban Line, within the settlement of Nakanosaku (a straight-line estimate from the coordinates of the station and the address). It is too far to walk, so a car or taxi is the practical choice. No visitor parking is advertised.