A Rest House for Daimyo on a Secondary Highway
The Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin (旧狩宿茶屋本陣, Kyū-Kariyado Chaya-Honjin) is a late-Edo-period wooden house in Ōkuwa, Naganohara Town, Gunma Prefecture, which served as the village headman's residence and as an official rest house on the old Shinshū Kaidō highway, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 10 May 2018.
A honjin was the accredited lodging where a travelling daimyo and his retinue stayed overnight. A chaya-honjin was the lesser version: a house authorised to receive them for a rest and a meal, on stretches where the day's march did not end. Most were ordinary farmhouses upgraded with one or two formal rooms, and most have since been rebuilt or lost. This one survived.
The building faces the road with its long side, under a gabled roof, and its second floor and eaves are carried forward on projecting purlins. Locally the technique is called degeta-zukuri or debari-zukuri, and it gives the front a shallow overhang that shelters the entrance. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the fabric to the later Edo period, roughly between 1751 and 1830, with an extension in 1885 and repairs in 1973.
Kariyado: A Crossroads and a Checkpoint
The place was known as Kariyado-shinden, newly opened farmland on the northern skirts of Mount Asama. Two routes met here. One was the Shinshū Kaidō, a waki-ōkan or secondary highway branching from the Nakasendō; the other ran between Kutsukake, Kusatsu and Kawarayu. A junction of that kind attracted official attention.
In 1652 the Sanada clan set up a private barrier at Kariyado to watch their strategic corridor between Ueda and Numata. The Tokugawa shogunate took it over as an official checkpoint in 1662 and began construction work on 25 March 1664. Its inspectors concentrated on pilgrims heading for Zenkōji temple and on bathers bound for the Kusatsu and Kawarayu hot springs, and applied the standard rules of the period with particular severity: guns entering the capital region and women leaving it. The checkpoint stood near what is now the playground of Ōkuwa Elementary School, where a stone marker was raised in 1970.
Travellers of rank passing through needed somewhere to stop, and that is what the chaya-honjin was for. The post town prospered on it.
Inside: Three Guest Rooms and a Pagoda-Tree Pillar
The plan is the clearest thing about the house. The earthen-floored work area has been removed, but the three raised ranges behind it remain, and along the upper side run three guest rooms in a row. At the far end is the jōdan-no-ma, the raised room reserved for the highest-ranking visitor.
Two details in that room repay attention. Its pillar is cut from enju, the Japanese pagoda tree, a wood chosen for formal rooms and rarely used elsewhere in a rural house. And the transom on the boundary with the middle room is an osa-ranma, filled with closely spaced vertical slats named after the reed of a weaving loom. The effect is a room that reads as a different order of space from the family's own quarters, which is precisely how a honjin was supposed to work: reception and daily life kept visibly apart under one roof.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs registers the current roof as metal sheeting over a building area of 172 square metres. Naganohara Town's own account describes the house as retaining the character of a plank roof weighted with stones, the regional method once used throughout this cold upland, alongside the projecting-purlin front.
Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa stayed here in the Meiji period, during the years when he was involved in opening the Asama pasture lands. Local accounts hold that the resident Kuroiwa family, known by the shop name Kurogen, was afterwards entrusted with raising one of his sons. The house also took up sericulture from the later Meiji years, as most of this region did.
Visiting
The house belongs to Naganohara Town and is not operated as a museum. There are no set opening hours, no admission counter and no regular interior access; the exterior, with its projecting front, can be seen from the road at Ōkuwa 28-1. Anyone hoping to see inside should contact the Cultural Properties Section of the Naganohara Town Board of Education in advance, on 0279-82-4517. Photography of the exterior from the public road is unrestricted.
Getting here means a car or a local bus. Naganohara-Kusatsuguchi Station on the JR Agatsuma Line is the nearest railhead, roughly half an hour away by road. Coming from the other direction, Karuizawa is about forty minutes by Route 146, which follows much the same line as the old Shinshū Kaidō.
Several things in the immediate area extend the same story. The Kariyado checkpoint marker is a few minutes away. So is the Sakuraiwa Jizō, raised in 1751 by the villagers of Kariyado for the safety of travellers crossing the Asama uplands, and now standing among the route-marker Kannon statues that were once set at intervals of roughly 108 metres along the three highways out of the Wakasare teahouse. Further north, the former Kita-Karuizawa Station of the Kusakaru Electric Railway, listed in 2006, marks what replaced the packhorse road.
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Q&A
- Is the Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin open to the public, and is there an admission fee?
- The building is owned by Naganohara Town but is not run as a visitor facility, so the interior is not regularly open and no admission is charged. The exterior can be viewed from the public road. Enquiries about interior access go to the town Board of Education, Cultural Properties Section, on 0279-82-4517.
- What exactly is a chaya-honjin, and how does the Kariyado building differ from a full honjin?
- A honjin was the accredited overnight lodging for daimyo on a main highway. A chaya-honjin was authorised for rest and meals rather than overnight stays, and was typical of secondary routes such as the Shinshū Kaidō. Few survive, which is the basis of this building's listing.
- When was the Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin built and when was it registered?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the fabric to the later Edo period, about 1751 to 1830, with an extension in 1885 and repairs in 1973. It was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 10 May 2018 under registration number 10-0342.
- How do I reach the Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin from Tokyo?
- Take the Hokuriku Shinkansen to Karuizawa, then Route 146 north for about forty minutes; or the JR Agatsuma Line to Naganohara-Kusatsuguchi, about thirty minutes away by road. A car makes the surrounding sites much easier to combine.
- What should I look for at the Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin?
- From outside, the projecting second floor and eaves carried on exposed purlins. If interior access is arranged, the three guest rooms in a row, the raised jōdan-no-ma with its pagoda-tree pillar, and the slatted osa-ranma transom beside it.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin (旧狩宿茶屋本陣) |
|---|---|
| Location | Ōkuwa, Aza Shinden 28-1, Naganohara Town, Agatsuma District, Gunma Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure); registration no. 10-0342; criterion: contribution to the historic landscape of the country |
| Year Designated | Registered 10 May 2018 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Wood-framed, two storeys, metal-sheet roof; building area 172 m²; later Edo period (c. 1751–1830), extended 1885, repaired 1973 |
| Owner | Naganohara Town, Agatsuma District |
| Public Access | Not operated as a visitor facility; exterior viewable from the road; interior access by prior enquiry to the town Board of Education (0279-82-4517) |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00012294
- Cultural Heritage Online — Former Kariyado Chaya-Honjin
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/566398
- Naganohara Town — Cultural Properties and Traditional Events
- https://www.town.naganohara.gunma.jp/education/?content=90
- Agency for Cultural Affairs — Report on newly registered tangible cultural properties, 9 March 2018
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/yukei_kenzobutsu/pdf/r1392281_30.pdf
Last verified: 2026.08.08