Former Aikawa Family Residence

A hardware merchant's house turned museum

The Former Aikawa Family Residence (旧相川家住宅, Kyū Aikawa-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant's compound in Sankocho, Isesaki City, Gunma Prefecture, whose main house dates from 1837; six of its buildings, gates and walls were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 6, 2025. The compound belongs to the Aikawa Archaeological Museum (相川考古館, Aikawa Kōkokan), a public interest foundation, and the whole property is open as a museum.

The Aikawas sold hardware in Isesaki from the early Edo period and served as town officials; nobody knows exactly when the business began. According to the museum, whenever shogunate inspectors were sent to Isesaki from 1639 onward, they used the Aikawa house. In 1838 the inspector Naitō Gensuke stopped to rest in the main house, which had been finished the year before. The museum describes the property as a town official's residence that also served as an auxiliary inn for travelling officials (waki-honjin).

The man who set the house on its way to becoming a museum was Aikawa Shiga, born in 1866 as the eldest son of the family's hardware dealer. In 1885, at nineteen, Shiga sailed alone for the United States and spent years gathering anthropological material in North America. On visits home he donated objects from Indigenous communities of Canada's Pacific coast to Tokyo Imperial University, and he kept collecting finds from the soil around Isesaki.

Shiga came back for good in 1914 to take over the family, became Isesaki's postmaster and a town councillor, and in 1921 joined Gunma's survey committee for historic sites and natural monuments. He founded a committee to build a museum in 1936, but the war ended the plan.

When Shiga died in 1950, his eldest daughter Tetsuko honoured his wish that the collection serve the public and opened the Aikawa Local Museum in the family home on October 15 that year. It was later renamed the Aikawa Archaeological Museum and became a foundation in 1993. Because the family turned its house into the exhibition space rather than building anew, the shop, living quarters, storehouse, household shrine and gates all survived together on one plot.

Six registrations, six dates

On March 21, 2025, the Council for Cultural Affairs recommended 135 buildings across Japan for the national register, and the six Aikawa structures were among them. Registration took effect with the official gazette notice of August 6, 2025. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 10-0367 to 10-0372, and all six were registered under the same criterion: structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

• Former Store: late Edo period, renovated in the mid-Showa period. Two storeys, built in the fireproof Dozo-zukuri earthen-wall technique
• Main House: 1837. Single-storey timber house with shoin-style reception rooms
• Storehouse: 1844. The old hardware warehouse, two storeys, dozo-zukuri
• Inari Shrine: 1882. A household shrine, also dozo-zukuri
• Front Gate and Wall: 1900. A Yakuimon gate with board walls
• Rear Gate and Wall: early Showa period. A bracketed udegimon gate with board walls

Together they span well over a century, from the late Edo period to the early Showa years. This was never a house designed in one go. It grew as trade and family life demanded, and the registration follows those additions building by building.

Fire explains much of what survives. The shop, the storehouse and the household shrine all have thick earthen walls, and the museum records that the bathhouse, the privy, the family sitting room that led to the shop, and the kitchen were once attached to the main house but were taken down as a fire precaution.

Two other treasures on the grounds sit outside this registration. Shōka-an (觴華庵), a tea house built in 1861 as retirement quarters for the family head who revived the household's fortunes in the last years of the shogunate, was designated by Gunma Prefecture on March 21, 2000; Isesaki City calls it the oldest full-scale tea house in the prefecture. A separate storeroom displays four haniwa figures that Shiga collected and that now hold national designation.

How the compound is laid out

The Former Aikawa Family Residence stands on the west side of Nishimachi street, and its east side, facing the street, is the formal front. At the north end of the frontage stands the low former store; the front gate and its board wall continue south from it and close off the eastern edge of the plot.

The main house attaches to the west side of the store, so living quarters open directly behind the shop. North of the main house runs the long east-west storehouse, joined to the west end of the main house's north wall; it gives the northern side of the plot its character. Beyond it, in the northwest corner, the Inari shrine faces east. The rear gate and wall are on the opposite side, fronting a narrow lane along the south edge of the plot and marking off its west side.

From the street you see shop and gate; behind them the house; behind that the storehouse and the shrine. Walking through, you can follow a merchant's plot shifting from public front to private back. For the street frontage, stand on the far side of Nishimachi street; for the rear gate, walk round to the lane on the south.

Visiting and getting there

The Former Aikawa Family Residence is open as the Aikawa Archaeological Museum from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with last entry at 4:00 p.m. It closes on Mondays; when Monday is a public holiday it opens and closes on the Tuesday instead. It also closes for the New Year from December 30 to January 3, and occasionally for collection work, so check the museum's notices before you set out.

Following a price revision on October 1, 2025, admission is 700 yen for adults and 300 yen for elementary and junior high school students, with 10 percent off for groups of 20 or more. In the Shōka-an tea house you can order matcha with a sweet for 600 yen, reduced by 100 yen for museum visitors. Groups and hands-on programmes should contact the museum in advance, and anyone wishing to photograph or publish material from the collection is asked to get in touch first.

By train, the museum is about 10 minutes on foot from Shin-Isesaki Station on the Tobu Isesaki Line, or about 12 minutes from Isesaki Station on the JR Ryomo Line. By car it is about 10 minutes from the Komagata interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway, and there is parking for 7 cars. The museum gives its address as 6-10 Sankocho, Isesaki; telephone 0270-25-0082. In the Agency for Cultural Affairs register, five of the six entries are listed at 6-11 Sankocho and the rear gate and wall at 6-17.