Kojima Family Residence (Narukiyo, Kakamigahara)

A prewar Showa household in Narukiyo

The Kojima Family Residence (Narukiyo, Kakamigahara) (小島家住宅, Kojima-ke Jūtaku) in Narukiyocho, Kakamigahara City, Gifu Prefecture, is the house and walled grounds of a family home built in the early Showa era in the modern Japanese style; on April 28, 2010, five parts of it were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties: the main house, the annex, the front gate, the outer wall, and the middle gate with its garden wall. Main house, service wing, gates and walls survive together, so the arrangement of a prewar home can still be read as a whole.

The registration numbers run 21-0184 (main house), 21-0185 (annex), 21-0187 (front gate), 21-0188 (outer wall) and 21-0189 (middle gate and garden wall). The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates all five to the early Showa era without giving a year for any of them.

On the same day, another Kojima Family Residence Main House, about 1.4 kilometres to the east in Ozanocho, was registered as number 21-0181. It shares the Japanese name but is a separate registration, and the Gifu prefectural list tells the two apart by adding the name of each neighbourhood.

How the grounds are laid out

Piecing together the official descriptions of each structure gives a fair picture of the plan. The main house stands toward the east side of the plot, facing south. The annex runs north to south from the eastern end of its south front. South of the main house lies a garden, divided by a garden wall running north to south, with the middle gate set halfway along it.

The front gate opens in the south boundary, toward the east. The outer wall runs east and west from the gate, turning corners as it goes, for 18 metres in all along the south side of the property.

Inside the main house, a room called the hatabeya sits at the east end, four rooms in a grid stand toward the west, and an earth-floored doma runs between them. The southwest corner is a 13-mat zashiki reception room. With the front gate on the east and the zashiki in the southwest corner, the plan suggests an everyday entrance yard on the east and, behind the garden wall, a garden in front of the reception room on the west. That reading comes from the recorded positions of the buildings, not from any account of how the family used the house.

Five structures, five kinds of craftsmanship

The main house was registered as a model of design, the other four as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house as a modern Japanese-style home built of fine timber and finished with care.

The gates and walls are each given their own materials and character. The front gate is a single-bay Yakuimon with rectangular main posts, a Kōryō tie beam and Taiheizuka strut in the gable, and a heart-pierced Gegyo gable pendant with side fins. The outer wall is an earthen wall raised on a base of uncoursed natural stone, with a washed-aggregate mortar dado and a band of green tiles at its foot.

The middle gate, by contrast, is an Udekimon framed and raftered in unhewn logs, and the garden wall is a board fence capped in copper. The agency calls the pair sukiya-style in design. Seen together, the two sets show a deliberate split: weight and formality toward the street, lightness inside the garden.

The annex lines up a well and washing area, a bath and a toilet from south to north, with tiles on its inside walls. Taken as a set, the five registrations show how a prewar Showa home changed its design from one part of the property to the next.

Visiting

The Kojima Family Residence (Narukiyo, Kakamigahara) is registered as a private house, and no public opening has been announced (as of October 2026). Assume that the grounds and the interiors are closed to visitors.

What can be seen from outside is probably limited to the front gate on the south boundary and the outer wall running east and west from it. The main house, annex and middle gate stand inside. Look from the road only, without lingering at the gate or peering through the lattice windows, and take photographs, if at all, without getting in the way of residents or traffic.

Getting there

Narukiyocho 2-chome, where the house stands, is about 1.7 kilometres in a straight line south-southwest of Shin-Naka Station on the Meitetsu Kakamigahara Line and about 1.8 kilometres from Naka Station on the JR Takayama Line. From the Gifu City side, Nagamori Station on the JR Takayama Line is about 2.7 kilometres to the northwest in a straight line.

This is not a visitor facility and has no parking for visitors. Those coming by car will need to use a parking lot in the area.