Yabuki Family Residence Main House

About the Yabuki Family Residence Main House

The Yabuki Family Residence Main House (矢吹家住宅主屋, Yabuki-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey house built in 1912 at the centre of the Yabuki family estate in Kamiyachi, Narukawa, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2015.

The Yabuki Family Residence Main House is a timber building 24 metres long, with a building area of 357 m². Its roof is thatch, now covered for the time being with sheet metal. It is by far the largest of the eleven registered parts of the estate; none of the others reaches 100 m².

A Farmhouse Type of Northern Fukushima

The Yabuki Family Residence Main House was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs adds that it shows how farmhouses in the north of Fukushima Prefecture developed.

The evidence lies in the roof. Over the earth-floored work area the thatch is cut back and lifted, a form known locally as azuma-zukuri. Raising one end of a great thatched roof in this way opens up the doma end of the house.

Here, in the last year of the Meiji era, a family chose to build a large two-storey house under thatch. Old roofing craft and the scale of a prosperous late-Meiji household meet in one building.

Four Rows of Rooms

Inside the Yabuki Family Residence Main House, the living rooms are laid out in four rows. The row next to the Doma has a separate entrance for guests, the second row is a large hall, and the westernmost row holds the finest reception rooms, wrapped in an veranda.

The doma is at the east end. Family and workers came and went through it, while visitors used their own entrance. The rooms grow more formal as you move west, ending in the veranda-wrapped rooms at the far side.

Later buildings follow the same logic. The early Showa reception wing, the new zashiki, is joined to the back of the house, and the bunko storehouse stands just outside the formal rooms on the west side.

Seeing the Yabuki Family Residence Main House

The Yabuki Family Residence Main House is part of a family property and its interior is not open. No public or special openings could be found as of October 2026.

Because the Yabuki Family Residence Main House stands in the middle of the plot, behind the gate and storehouses on the street side, only part of its great roof is likely to be visible from the road, over the front gate. The lifted azuma-zukuri end is over the doma at the east end, so the eastern street is the place to look. Please photograph only from the public road. Directions are on the Yabuki Family Residence page.