Machida Family Residence

What is the Machida Family Residence?

The Machida Family Residence (町田家住宅, Machida-ke Jūtaku) is a historic family estate on National Route 353 in Nakanojo, Agatsuma District, Gunma Prefecture, whose late Edo-period main house and four Meiji-era structures (a miso storehouse, an outer storehouse, a gate and a wall) were entered on the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2001.

All five were registered on the same day, August 28, 2001, under consecutive registration numbers 10-0080 to 10-0084, and all five meet the same criterion: they contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Nakanojo Town lists them in its heritage register as a single entry, "Machida Family Residence". Locally the house also goes by the nickname Kakuichi.

According to the Nakanojo Tourism Association, the estate stands on the east side of the corner where Shimonomachi street turns into Tatsumachi (known locally as Kanente). The front entrance, with its prominent gable, is the landmark to look for.

Sources write the address in two ways. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the district name as Ōaza Nakanojo 982, while the town's heritage list and the tourism association write Nakanojo-machi 982. This site follows the Agency's form.

A headman's house that briefly served as a district office

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Machida Family Residence main house as both a home and an official residence for a family that served as ōjōya and later as ward chiefs. An ōjōya was a senior village headman in the Edo period who oversaw the headmen (Shōya) of several villages; ward chiefs were local administrators under the new Meiji government. The Machida family, in other words, handled public business from their own house across the shift from domain rule to the modern state.

For a time the main house also hosted the district office (gun'yakusho). The Agency singles this out, noting that the building helps show what district office architecture looked like in the early Meiji era. The tourism association adds that the house played a central role in the area from the last years of the Edo period through the upheaval of the Meiji Restoration, until politics settled down.

The main house is the oldest of the five. The Agency dates it to the late Edo period, a span it gives as 1751 to 1829. The miso storehouse, outer storehouse and gate date from the early Meiji era, which began in 1868, and the wall from the Meiji era, so the estate as a whole took shape around the older house during the decades after the Restoration.

How the Machida Family Residence is laid out

The Machida Family Residence occupies an L-shaped plot. The main house faces south onto Route 353, and behind it the plot turns west. Piecing together the Agency's notes on each structure gives roughly this arrangement:

• Main house: fronting Route 353, with its entrance toward the west end of the south face.
• Gate: a Yakuimon standing east of the main house, with a side entrance between the gate and the stone wall at the main house's east gable.
• Miso storehouse: a small storehouse set some way north of the main house's northeast corner.
• Outer storehouse: a two-story white-walled storehouse further to the northeast.
• Wall: a roofed board fence enclosing the west and north sides of the L-shaped plot, 83 meters long in total.

From Route 353 you see the main house frontage and the gate; the two storehouses and the wall sit deeper in the plot or along its back edge. A large townhouse (Machiya) and gate face the street, storehouses stand behind, and a fence marks the outer edge. Because all five were registered together, that arrangement survives as one continuous streetscape.

Visiting the Machida Family Residence

The Machida Family Residence is a private home that is still lived in. We found no notice of regular interior openings or tours (checked October 2, 2026), so the estate is viewed from the sidewalk of Route 353. Please stay off the property, take photos only from the road, and be mindful of the residents.

The nearest station is Nakanojō (中之条) on the JR Agatsuma Line. The house lies northwest of the station in the town center, on the way toward the town hall. On the map the route is about 800 meters, roughly a 10-minute walk.

The Nakanojo Tourism Association gives these journey times: about 50 minutes from Tokyo Station to Takasaki on the Joetsu or Hokuriku Shinkansen, then about 55 minutes on the Agatsuma Line to Nakanojo. The limited express Kusatsu-Shima runs direct from Ueno Station in about 2 hours 5 minutes. By car, Nakanojo is about 40 minutes along Route 353 from the Shibukawa-Ikaho interchange on the Kan-Etsu Expressway. We found no mention of visitor parking at the Machida Family Residence.