Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House

About the Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House

The Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House (瀬上嶋貫本家住宅主屋, Senoue Shimanuki Honke Jūtaku Shuoku) is the main dwelling of the Shimanuki head family on the old Ōshū Kaidō highway in Senoue-machi, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture, built in 1899 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2013.

It is a two-storey timber house under a gabled roof with a building area of 214 m², the largest of the five registered parts of the estate. It stands north of the front gate, between the gate and the garden wall. According to the family, this Meiji-era house was restored by the eleventh head of the line and keeps its original character.

A Western Face for the Highway

What sets the Shimanuki main house apart is the tall gable end it turns to the old highway. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes clapboard (Shitami-itabari) fitted between the posts, an ornament at the ogami, the apex where the two bargeboards meet, and small hoods over the windows. Together they give a Japanese gabled house a set of Western touches.

For a landlord's house in a Tōhoku post town in 1899, this was a statement made to everyone passing on the road. Stand across the street and the triangle of the gable rises high above you, the horizontal lines of the boards broken by the shadows of the window hoods.

The Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, and that gable is the main reason: it anchors the row of buildings along the old road.

The database is inconsistent on the roofing. The structure field says steel sheet, while the description says copper sheet. Either way, the roof is metal-clad.

Six Rooms on Each Floor

Inside, both storeys follow a Rokumadori plan of six rooms, and part of the house is open to the roof as a Fukinuke void. Repeating the full room layout upstairs shows that the upper floor was finished as living and reception space, not left as storage.

The agency singles out the household shrine shelf (kamidana), the formal alcove fittings (Zashiki-kazari) and the carved transoms (Ranma) as work of high quality. Upstairs is a Western-style room whose interior the agency also rates highly, so the Western idea carried through from the street front into the house itself.

Visiting the Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House

Visits to the estate, including the Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence Main House, are by reservation only. The official site shows photographs of the interiors and of a large upstairs hall, which suggests that tours go inside, but ask when booking which rooms you can enter and whether photographs are allowed.

From outside, the gable is best seen from the old highway on the east side. Visitors enter by the north gate, not the front gate on the street. Directions and booking details are on the Senoue Shimanuki Main Family Residence page.