Komoda Family Residence

About the Komoda Family Residence

The Komoda Family Residence (小茂田家住宅, Komoda-ke Jūtaku) is a silkworm-egg and sericulture farmstead in Naganuma-machi, Isesaki City, Gunma Prefecture, centred on a main house of the early Meiji period, and its four buildings, the main house, silkworm rearing house, storehouse and well house, became Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 17, 2004. The buildings range in date from the early Meiji period to 1927, so a single plot shows how a farming family that lived by producing silkworm eggs and raising silkworms enlarged its homestead over half a century.

Isesaki City describes the main house as an early Meiji farmhouse with a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof, 10 ken long and 5 ken deep. Three raised ventilation roofs, or Koshi-yane, sit along its ridge, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls this arrangement the mitsu-yagura, the "three turrets." Approach the Komoda Family Residence from outside and these three small roofs are the first thing you see.

Silkworm Eggs at Naganuma and the Shinjinkan

Isesaki City presents the Komoda Family Residence together with Komoda Tōkitsu (小茂田藤橘), a pioneering figure in silkworm-egg production who founded a group known as the Naganuma-gumi. He also used the house as a training school for sericulture under the name Shinjinkan (親仁館). The Komoda home was therefore more than one family's dwelling: it was a place where neighbouring farmers came to learn how to raise silkworms.

Together with the village of Shimamura, the Naganuma area formed a district where silkworm-egg production flourished. Gunma Prefecture has also listed the Komoda Family Residence as one of its Gunma Silk Heritage sites, explaining the three raised roofs as ventilation openings and presenting the house as a well-kept piece of the landscape from the heyday of silkworm-egg production.

The Four Buildings

The main house of the Komoda Family Residence stands in the middle of the plot, with the other buildings to its southeast and north. Positions, structures and floor areas below follow the Agency for Cultural Affairs database.

• The main house faces south from the centre of the plot. It is a two-storey timber building of the early Meiji period with a footprint of 278 square meters; its upper floor was the silkworm room, and the mitsu-yagura rides on its ridge.
• The silkworm rearing house stands beside the gate in the southeast corner, its ridge running north to south. It is a two-storey timber building of 1917 with a footprint of 141 square meters, and its south end is sunk half below ground as a store for silkworm eggs.
• The storehouse lies northwest of the main house with its ridge running east to west. It is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri building of 1927 with a footprint of 62 square meters and a miso room on its east gable end.
• The well house stands north of the main house. It is a single-storey timber shelter of the early Meiji period, 9.8 square meters in area, that gathers a well and a washing place on a stone platform under a Yosemune-zukuri hipped roof.

All four were registered on the same day as numbers 10-0102 to 10-0105, but each was registered on its own grounds. The main house was recognised as a model of form, the storehouse as something that would be hard to reproduce, and the silkworm rearing house and well house as contributions to the historic landscape. Read in order of date, a Meiji house followed by a Taisho rearing house and a Showa storehouse, the group shows the homestead growing as the silkworm-egg business grew.

Visiting

The Komoda Family Residence is a private home and is not open to the public. Gunma Prefecture's Silk Heritage guide also states that only the exterior can be viewed. Visitors cannot enter the buildings or the grounds, and no special openings were found at the time of writing. Please stay on the road, take photographs only from public ground and keep clear of the residents' daily life.

The house is in Naganuma-machi in the south of Isesaki City. According to Gunma Prefecture, it takes about 15 minutes by car from Sakaimachi Station on the Tobu Isesaki Line, about 25 minutes by car from Isesaki Station on the JR Ryomo Line, and about 15 minutes from the Honjo-Kodama interchange on the Kan-Etsu Expressway. Both stations are some distance away, so a car or taxi is the practical way to get there.