Kojima Family Residence Main House

A 1929 single-storey house in Ozano

The Kojima Family Residence Main House (小島家住宅主屋, Kojima-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) in Ozanocho, Kakamigahara City, Gifu Prefecture, is a single-storey timber house built in 1929 and extended later in the early Showa era; it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 28, 2010 (number 21-0181).

The Kojima Family Residence Main House stands toward the front of the middle of its plot, with a factory behind it. Its building area of 202 square metres is generous for a single-storey home.

A different house with the same Japanese name, number 21-0184, stands in Narukiyocho, about 1.4 kilometres to the west, and was registered the same day. The Gifu prefectural list tells them apart by adding the neighbourhood names, Ozano and Narukiyo.

Six rooms off a tatami corridor

The plan is the central-corridor type: a central corridor runs east to west, with 3 rooms on each side, north and south. This layout spread through Japanese homes from the Taisho era into the early Showa era because it let people reach each room without walking through another.

What sets the Kojima house apart is that its corridor is laid with tatami rather than boards. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls attention to this, and it suggests a household that treated the passage as an extension of the living rooms rather than a mere hallway.

A pyramid roof and a clipped gable

The main roof is gabled and laid with pantiles, with a lean-to Geya eave around the house. On the east side, a reception room with a pyramidal Hōgyō-zukuri roof projects toward the south, and a bedroom with a half-hipped roof projects toward the north.

Three different roof forms meet on the east front: the long gable, the square pyramid over the reception room and the clipped gable over the bedroom. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the result distinctive. Giving the reception room its own roof made it the face of the house, in keeping with the way homes of the early Showa era set apart the room where guests were received.

Why it was registered

The Kojima Family Residence Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. Built in 1929, it combines a central-corridor plan with an added reception room and bedroom, one of the ways a conventional Japanese house of the time took in modern habits of living.

Visiting and getting there

The Kojima Family Residence Main House is registered as a private home, and no public opening has been announced (as of October 2026). Assume the grounds and interior are closed. Because it stands toward the front of the middle of the plot, how much can be seen from outside depends on the boundary. Look from the road only, and avoid getting in the way of residents or the factory.

Ozanocho 3-chome is about 2.1 kilometres in a straight line south of Shin-Naka and Shimin-Koen-Mae stations on the Meitetsu Kakamigahara Line and of Naka Station on the JR Takayama Line. This is not a visitor facility, and there is no visitor parking.