Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House

A merchant's home from 1837

The Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House (旧相川家住宅主屋, Kyū Aikawa-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a single-storey merchant's dwelling built in 1837 in Sankocho, Isesaki City, Gunma Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 6, 2025. It was the family quarters of the Aikawas, who sold hardware and served as town officials through the Edo period, and it is now shown as part of the Aikawa Archaeological Museum.

The timber house covers 100 square metres. Its gabled roof, in the Kirizuma-zukuri form, runs north to south and is sheeted in metal, with some tile remaining. On the east the Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House joins the former store directly, so the home sits right behind the shop in classic merchant fashion. At the west end of its north wall it also connects to the storehouse where the family kept its hardware stock.

Work was done on the house around 1958 and again in 2000. The museum notes that a bathhouse, a privy, a sitting room leading to the shop and the kitchen were once part of it but were taken down to reduce the risk of fire. What remains is the part of the house built for receiving guests.

Why it was registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs picks out the Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House for its carefully finished shoin-style reception rooms. Starting from the south, a reception anteroom (toritsugi) leads to an eight-mat middle room (naka-no-ma) and then to an eight-mat upper room (jōdan-no-ma) at the northwest, the sequence turning a corner in an L-shape. Along the south side of the upper room runs a tatami-floored corridor one ken wide, and the woodwork around the alcove is finished with real care.

Guests were met in the anteroom, passed through the middle room and were shown into the upper room at the very back. Jōdan-no-ma is the name given to a room of raised rank reserved for the principal guest, and here it sits in the deepest corner of the house. The further you move from the shop, the more formal the rooms become.

Museum records say that in 1838, the year after the house went up, the shogunate inspector Naitō Gensuke rested here. The Aikawa house had been a stopping point for inspectors on their circuits since 1639. Read that way, a suite of rooms built to receive official visitors makes obvious sense.

At the southeast corner, a formal entrance step (Shikidai) and a family entrance project under a small Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof, giving the plain gabled house an entrance of a different rank. The registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the country.

What to look for

Begin at the southeast entrance of the Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House. In front of the broad gabled roof stand the shikidai and the family entrance side by side. The shikidai was the entry for formal guests; the family entrance was for the household and everyday comings and goings. Having both tells you the house expected official callers.

The entrance hall displays a spear and a sodegarami, a barbed pole once used to catch offenders, along with photographs and signboards from the family's hardware business. Fitting objects for a household that kept order in the town.

From the entrance through to the middle room, look up. Ventilation holes cut into the ceiling survive from the years when the family raised silkworms. Isesaki was a sericulture and weaving town, famous for its meisen silk, and for a time the silkworms shared the house with the formal rooms.

In the upper room, compare the alcove joinery with the tatami corridor along the south side. The corridor acts as a buffer between room and garden and gives the space its calm.

Visiting

The Former Aikawa Family Residence Main House is part of the museum's display, so admission lets you step up into the reception rooms. The objects in the entrance hall and the ventilation holes above the middle room can both be seen from inside.

Because the house adjoins the former store on its east side, you cannot take it in whole from the street. The shikidai entrance is best seen from within the grounds.

The museum asks anyone wishing to photograph or publish its material to contact it first, so check at reception before taking pictures inside. Opening hours, admission and directions are covered on the Former Aikawa Family Residence page.