Wada Family Residence

About the Wada Family Residence

The Wada Family Residence (和田家住宅, Wada-ke Jūtaku) is an early Showa-period house in Hachimancho, Kasamatsu Town, Gifu Prefecture, built between 1926 and 1945, whose main house, storehouse, and gate and wall were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on June 28, 2017.

All three share the lot number 96 in Hachimancho (the gate and wall extend onto neighbouring lots), and their registration numbers run consecutively from 21-0252 to 21-0254. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates each of them to the early Showa years, so the house, the storehouse and the street frontage were put in place as a single campaign.

The registration criteria split two ways. The main house was registered as a model of design, while the storehouse and the gate and wall were registered for their contribution to the historic townscape. In other words, one building is valued for what lies inside, and two for what they give the street.

Visitors searching for the name may also find the thatched Wada Family Residence in Ogimachi, Shirakawa Village. That is a different family and a separate listing. This page covers only the Wada house in Kasamatsu.

A Silk-Farming Fortune and a Kyoto Carpenter

According to Kasamatsu Town, the Wada Family Residence was built by Wada Kiichirō, who had made his fortune in sericulture, the raising of silkworms for raw silk. He brought in a carpenter from Kyoto and paid for good timber and careful detailing, and he added a fully Western-style room on the upper floor.

The town points to two reasons for the registration: the house has been altered very little inside or out, and it helps hold together the character of the old road it faces. A house of the late 1920s or 1930s still stands on that road much as it was built.

Public records say nothing about the scale of the family business, the name of the carpenter, or the exact year of completion. This page stays within what the Agency and the town have published.

In the Old Administrative Centre of Kasamatsu

Kasamatsu was the seat of a shogunate intendant's office from 1662 until the end of the Edo period, and it housed the Kasamatsu and then the Gifu prefectural government until 1873. It also prospered as a transfer point for boat traffic on the Kiso River.

The Agency describes the Wada Family Residence as standing in the centre of Kasamatsu, and the town places it on the old road near Hachiman Shrine. It is a Showa-era house presenting its front to one of the oldest streets in town.

How the Property Is Laid Out

Read together, the three official descriptions give a fair picture of the Wada site. The main house faces east, with a main entrance and a secondary entrance side by side on that front.

The gate and wall enclose the east and south sides of the lot. The gate sits on the east side between two short flanking walls, and from there the wall runs along the street and turns to follow the south boundary, about 18 meters in all.

The storehouse stands in the southwest corner and faces east. An earth-floored passage runs from the main house to reach it, so the house, storehouse and wall form one connected line along the south of the lot, with a garden inside the wall.

Visiting: Access and Viewing

The Wada Family Residence is a private home, and the town's tourism site lists no opening days or hours. The grounds and interiors are not accessible, so a visit means looking at the exterior from the street. Please keep noise down and respect the residents' privacy.

From the road you can see the east gate and wall, the front of the main house above the wall, and the storehouse at the southwest corner. The floor plan and the upstairs Western room can be seen in photographs on the Agency's national database and on Cultural Heritage Online.

The nearest station is Kasamatsu on the Meitetsu Nagoya Main Line and Takehana Line, about 30 minutes from Meitetsu Nagoya and about 5 minutes from Meitetsu Gifu according to the town. The house lies roughly 620 meters southwest of the station in a straight line, about a 10-minute walk. No visitor parking is provided.