Nakamura Yaichi Shoten and Nakamura Family Residence

A silk merchant's lot on Honcho-dori

The Nakamura Yaichi Shoten and Nakamura Family Residence (中村弥市商店・中村家住宅, Nakamura Yaichi Shōten and Nakamura-ke Jūtaku) is the townhouse lot of the Nakamura family, raw-silk dealers in Honcho 1-chome, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, and its seven buildings, from an inner room of 1894 to a storehouse and stone storehouse of about 1937, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on November 10, 2005.

Four of the seven, the store, document storehouse, new reception wing and stone storehouse, are registered under the name Nakamura Yaichi Shoten. The inner room, bathhouse and gate are registered as the Nakamura Family Residence. The names differ, but the registration numbers run straight from 10-0136 to 10-0142 and all seven share one address, 1-6-33 Honcho. Kiryu City presents them as a single estate.

Shōten simply means store. Nakamura Yaichi Shoten is the name of the paint shop the family still runs from the front building, so the two names map neatly onto a Kiryu merchant house: business on the street, family life behind it.

A plot 12 meters wide and 72 meters deep

The Nakamura Yaichi Shoten and Nakamura Family Residence stands on the east side of Honcho-dori, on a long, narrow plot about 12 meters (6.5 ken) wide and about 72 meters (40 ken) deep. According to Kiryu City, those are the original lot dimensions of Kiryu Shinmachi, the town laid out in 1591, whose plot boundaries largely survive.

The buildings line up along the north side of the plot. The store comes first, facing west onto Honcho-dori. Behind it, running east, are the new reception wing, the document storehouse and the inner room. The bathhouse and stone storehouse stand together along the south edge.

The gate sits on the street just south of the store and opens onto a passage running back along the south side of the plot, past the bathhouse and stone storehouse. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out this arrangement, a shop and a gate side by side on the street with a passage leading in, as a good example of how modern Kiryu townhouse lots were divided.

An alley runs along the north side of the store, and the document storehouse and inner room also turn their north walls to it. Looking down the alley you pass three very different walls in a row: the gray plaster of the store, the white walls of the storehouse and the Shitami-itabari clapboard of the inner room.

From pawnbroker to silk dealer to paint shop

The Kiryu branch of the Nakamura family was founded by Nakamura Rihachi, born in 1846, who split from the main family in Okinogo, Kyuhaku Village (now part of Ota City), and moved to Kiryu in 1876. He worked as a pawnbroker and rice dealer before turning to raw silk thread. A Gunma business directory published in 1904 carries the entry "silk dealer Nakamura Yaichi", with the given name written 弥一.

From the Meiji era into the early Showa period, Kiryu's silk-weaving industry was at its height after a successful modernization. The first Nakamura Yaichi, born in 1880, built many houses to rent out, and by the early Showa years the family owned still more property. Kiryu City counts the Nakamuras among the town's leading merchant families, made prosperous by the silk trade.

The second Nakamura Yaichi, born in 1923, was called up in the Second World War and returned home afterward. After the war he left the silk business, and in 1958 he opened a paint store, Nakamura Yaichi Shoten, which is still trading today.

Seven buildings from three periods

The inner room is the oldest. An ink inscription on a beam of the storehouse built into it gives the construction date as October 16, 1894, and notes that Rihachi was 48 and Yaichi 14 at the time. The store followed 28 years later, in 1922; a rental-property ledger kept by the family records the exact date.

The other five, the document storehouse, new reception wing, stone storehouse, bathhouse and gate, all date to about 1937. The document storehouse and new reception wing use reinforced concrete, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes as a fairly early use of the material in a Japanese home. The bathhouse came after Kiryu's municipal water supply was completed in 1932 and was built as a separate building with running water from the start.

• Nakamura Yaichi Shoten Store: 1922, 2-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 88 square meters
• Nakamura Yaichi Shoten New Reception Wing: about 1937, 1-story reinforced concrete and 2-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 37 square meters
• Nakamura Yaichi Shoten Document Storehouse: about 1937, 2-story reinforced concrete building, tiled roof, building area 23 square meters
• Nakamura Family Residence Inner Room: 1894, 1-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 85 square meters
• Nakamura Yaichi Shoten Stone Storehouse: about 1937, 1-story stone building, tiled roof, building area 25 square meters
• Nakamura Family Residence Bathhouse: about 1937, 1-story wooden building, tiled roof, building area 6.2 square meters
• Nakamura Family Residence Gate: about 1937, wooden, tiled roof, 2.3 m wide

The document storehouse and new reception wing were registered as models of design. The other five were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape.

Visiting the Nakamura Yaichi Shoten and Nakamura Family Residence

All seven buildings are still in use as a shop and a family home, so none of the interiors is open to the public and visits are limited to the outside. From Honcho-dori you get a clear view of the store front and the gate beside it. The area inside the gate and the back of the north alley are private, so please look from the street.

The whole of Honcho 1-chome and 2-chome, along with part of Tenjincho 1-chome, was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings on July 9, 2012, and the Nakamura estate lies inside it. Because most of the district's buildings are lived in, Kiryu City asks visitors not to enter any property without permission and to ask before taking photographs.

The nearest railway station is JR Kiryu on the Ryomo Line. From the north exit, the district is about 15 minutes on foot or about 5 minutes by Orihime Bus or taxi. From Shin-Kiryu Station on the Tobu Line, allow about 10 minutes by bus or taxi. There is no parking inside the district; use the paid town-center car parks nearby.

The district's visitor base, Machinaka Koryukan, is also in Honcho 1-chome, at 7-4. It offers tourist information and leaflets and is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (last entry 4:30 p.m.). It is closed on Tuesdays (the following day if Tuesday is a holiday) and over the New Year period, among other days, and admission is free.