Former Miyagawa Family Residence, Main Building

Former Miyagawa Family Residence Main House: A Farmhouse Saved from a Vanished Mountain Village

Deep in the western Mino region of Gifu Prefecture, on a wooded hillside in Seki City, stands a thatched-roof farmhouse that should no longer exist. Originally built in the remote mountain village of Tokuyama, the Former Miyagawa Family Residence Main House (Kyū Miyagawa-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is one of the very few buildings that survived the disappearance of an entire village beneath the waters of Japan's largest reservoir. Today it rests quietly inside Gifu Prefectural Hundred-Year Park, a tangible memory of a way of life that vanished from the map of Japan.

The Village That Disappeared Beneath the Water

To understand the importance of this farmhouse, you have to understand what was lost. Tokuyama Village, in the upper reaches of the Ibi River, was a community of eight settlements, roughly 466 households, and around 1,500 people. Its residents had built a self-sufficient mountain culture over generations, with thatched farmhouses, terraced fields, and traditional crafts such as paper-making.

From the late 1950s, plans for the Tokuyama Dam slowly took shape. After decades of negotiation, the villagers were required to leave. In 1987, Tokuyama Village was officially dissolved and merged into the neighboring Fujihashi Village (now part of Ibigawa Town). When the Tokuyama Dam was completed in 2008, most of the former village area was submerged beneath Lake Tokuyama, today the largest reservoir in Japan by capacity. The village exists now only in photographs, memories, and a handful of buildings rescued and relocated elsewhere in Gifu Prefecture.

The Former Miyagawa Family Residence Main House is one of those rescued buildings. The final household head, Mr. Sumio Miyagawa, donated the structure to Gifu Prefecture so that its construction methods and the daily life of mountain farming families would not be lost to the bottom of the reservoir.

A Mountain Farmhouse of the Western Mino Region

The house was carefully dismantled in its original location and reassembled at Gifu Prefectural Hundred-Year Park, where it was completed in September 1987 and opened to visitors in October of the same year. It is administered as an outdoor facility of the Gifu Prefectural Museum.

The building is a one-story wooden structure with partial second-floor lofts, topped by a hipped thatched roof. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs registration, it was built in 1890 (Meiji 23), although some local sources suggest its origins may stretch back into the late Edo period. Either way, it preserves the characteristic features of mountain village farmhouses in the western Mino region with remarkable clarity.

Several details make this farmhouse distinct. The center of the front-facing thatched roof is notched and fitted with a small pent roof, allowing natural light to reach the second-floor sleeping spaces above the board-floored room (itanoma) and the bedroom area (neya). The outer walls are clad in vertical boards set between posts spaced at half-ken intervals — an adaptation to the heavy snow and freezing winters of the Ibi River headwaters, where mud-plastered walls would not have lasted. In one corner of the earthen-floored work area (doma), there is a small room dedicated to paper-making, a glimpse of the home industries that helped families survive long mountain winters.

Why It Was Designated a Cultural Property

On November 2, 2018, the building was registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Buildings) by the national government, under the official name "Former Miyagawa Family Residence Main House."

The designation recognizes several layers of value. Architecturally, the house is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a mountain farmhouse type that is now extremely difficult to find in its original form. The hiroma-style interior layout, the cold-climate vertical-board exterior, and the integrated paper-making room together capture an entire mode of mountain life. Historically, the building carries a weight that goes beyond its boards and beams: it is a physical witness to the disappearance of Tokuyama Village. Few cultural properties in Japan combine architectural rarity with this kind of social memory.

What to See When You Visit

From the outside, the deep eaves and the thick, dark sweep of the thatched roof create a sense of enclosure that is quite different from the airy townhouses of the Mino plain. Look closely at the front of the roof and you will see the unusual cut where the thatch has been opened up and a small board roof inserted — a clever solution to a basic problem of getting light into the upper floor of a deeply roofed mountain house.

Inside, the eye is drawn first to the large doma earthen-floored area, with its hearth and traditional household tools. The hiroma — a single large room used for daily living, meals, and receiving guests — gives a sense of how compact and multi-purpose family life was. The narrow staircase up to the loft, the small paper-making room in the corner of the doma, and the soot-darkened beams overhead all speak of long winters spent largely indoors. The Gifu Prefectural Museum has also placed displays inside that introduce the history of Tokuyama Village itself, so a visit becomes a chance not only to admire architecture but to reflect on what was lost.

The surrounding park is beautiful in its own right. In late spring, iris flowers fill the famous shobu garden nearby; in autumn, the gentle hills around the farmhouse glow with red and gold — the park is included in the "Hida-Mino 33 Best Autumn Foliage" list. A visit can easily be combined with the main exhibits of the Gifu Prefectural Museum a short walk away.

Around the Farmhouse: Things to See in Seki

Seki City is famous worldwide as one of the three great cutlery-producing cities, alongside Solingen in Germany and Sheffield in England. Visitors to the Former Miyagawa Family Residence Main House can easily combine their trip with several of Seki's signature cultural attractions.

• Seki Kaji Denshokan (Seki Sword Tradition Museum): Displays masterworks by famous swordsmiths such as Magoroku Kanemoto and Kanesada, with periodic public demonstrations of traditional sword forging.
• Gifu Cutlery Hall: A direct-sale center where over 2,000 items — kitchen knives, scissors, nail clippers, and more — are offered at maker's prices, along with on-site sharpening services.
• Monet's Pond (Nemichi Shrine): A small spring-fed pond made famous on social media for its uncanny resemblance to the water lily paintings of Claude Monet.
• Seki Enku-kan: A museum dedicated to the wandering Edo-period monk Enkū, who spent his final years in Seki and is said to have carved more than 120,000 Buddhist statues during his lifetime.

For those drawn to the story of Tokuyama Village itself, the Tokuyama Kaikan memorial hall on the shore of Lake Tokuyama in Ibigawa Town (roughly 90 minutes' drive away) preserves photographs and personal items from the lost village.