Old Karuizawa House (former Matsukata Family Villa)

Former Karuizawa House (Former Matsukata Family Villa) — A Red-Walled Time Capsule of Japan's First International Resort

Tucked among the larches and broadleaf trees of Old Karuizawa, a modest two-story building with cherry-red wooden siding tells one of the most fascinating stories of modern Japan. The Former Karuizawa House, also known as the Former Matsukata Family Villa, is a registered national tangible cultural property that once belonged to Matsukata Haruko — granddaughter of one of Meiji Japan's greatest statesmen and wife of an American ambassador. Today it lives a gentle second life as a café, where visitors can step inside, sit by an Asama-stone fireplace, and breathe the same cool highland air that drew Tokyo's elite here a century ago.

Historical Background: From Post Town to International Highland Retreat

To understand this villa, one first needs to understand Karuizawa itself. Until the late 19th century, Karuizawa was a quiet post-station town along the Nakasendo, the historic highway connecting Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. When the Meiji Restoration ended the post-station system, the town nearly vanished from the map — until a Canadian-born Anglican missionary named Alexander Croft Shaw arrived in 1886. Captivated by the cool summer climate, the views of Mount Asama, and the absence of mosquitoes, Shaw built a simple summer cottage here in 1888 and recommended the area to friends, fellow missionaries, and Japanese acquaintances. Within a generation, Karuizawa had transformed into a beloved highland resort where foreign diplomats, academics, missionaries, and Japan's emerging aristocratic and industrial elite mingled freely each summer.

The villa featured here was built around 1927, in the early Showa era, against this backdrop of refined cosmopolitan summer life. It came to be owned by Matsukata Haruko (松方春子), a granddaughter of Matsukata Masayoshi (1835–1924) — a former Prime Minister of Japan, finance minister, and one of the chief architects of Japan's modern banking and gold-standard currency system. Haruko herself became internationally known under another name: she was the wife of Edwin O. Reischauer, a Harvard scholar of Japan who served as United States Ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966 and is remembered as a key bridge between the two nations during a critical postwar decade.

Local accounts add further intrigue. During restoration work, Meiji-era newspapers were discovered behind the wallpaper and inside the fusuma sliding doors, suggesting the building may originally have been a Meiji-period inn relocated from the bustling old post-town district that is now Old Karuizawa Ginza. The villa's floor plan also closely echoes that of the very first Karuizawa cottage built by Shaw himself, hinting at the deep continuity between the town's missionary roots and its later refined villa culture. In the 1970s, the novelist Mori Yoko (1940–1993) is said to have used the villa as a summer retreat and writing studio, adding yet another literary layer to its long story.

Why It Was Designated a National Cultural Property

On December 24, 2013, the Former Karuizawa House was added to Japan's national register of tangible cultural properties as an architectural work. The Registered Tangible Cultural Property system, established in 1996, is designed to protect significant modern buildings that continue to be used in everyday life — a gentler form of protection than the strict designation system, intended to preserve heritage while keeping it alive.

The villa earned its place on the register for several reasons. First, it is a remarkably well-preserved example of an early Showa-era Karuizawa summer house, retaining the open, restrained atmosphere that defined the town's villa architecture. Second, its construction details — red clapboard exterior, gable roof with sheet metal cladding, central corridor floor plan, and a fireplace built from Asama volcanic stone — embody the regional building vocabulary that grew up in the Karuizawa highlands. Third, its association with the Matsukata family, and through them with both Meiji political history and postwar Japan-United States cultural exchange, gives the building a layered historical significance that extends well beyond its modest size.

Architectural and Cultural Highlights

The villa is a wooden two-story structure with a building area of about 135 square meters. The roof is in the kiritsuma (gable) style, finished in sheet metal, and a lean-to (geya) extension projects from the eastern side, softening the building's silhouette and adding usable interior space. The exterior is finished in horizontal wooden clapboard siding painted a warm cherry red — a choice that gives the building enormous visual character against the surrounding green of the larch forest, especially in autumn and winter when the leaves have thinned.

Inside, the layout follows a classic Karuizawa villa arrangement: a central corridor on both floors, with rooms opening symmetrically on either side. This plan promotes natural cross-ventilation, an essential feature for summer use, while providing privacy between bedrooms and shared spaces. Windows are placed on every face of the building, flooding the interior with the soft, filtered light of the highland forest.

The undisputed centerpiece is the living room fireplace on the ground floor, built from Asama-ishi — volcanic stone quarried from the slopes of nearby Mount Asama. Asama stone has long been a signature material of Karuizawa villa architecture, prized for its rough texture, deep grey-brown tones, and the way it anchors a room with quiet, geological gravity. Sitting in front of this fireplace on a cool evening, with the wooden walls glowing in the lamplight, one can easily imagine the conversations of literary, political, and diplomatic guests that may have unfolded here.

Visiting Today: A Café Inside a Cultural Property

One of the great pleasures of this heritage site is that it is genuinely accessible. Today the building operates as a café known as Kyu-Karuizawa Café Suzunone (旧軽井沢Cafe 涼の音), allowing anyone to step inside, order a drink or a light meal, and spend time in the very rooms once enjoyed by the Matsukata family. Few registered cultural properties in Japan offer such an intimate, unhurried experience of historic interior space.

Visitors typically enjoy the cozy ground-floor living room with its Asama-stone fireplace, and a terrace area surrounded by trees in warmer months. Because Suzunone operates as a working café, please check current opening hours and seasonal closures before visiting, and be respectful of the building's heritage character: the wooden floors, original windows, and historic finishes deserve gentle treatment.

The villa stands just off the main shopping street of Old Karuizawa (Kyu-Karuizawa Ginza), which makes it an easy and rewarding stop on a half-day or full-day exploration of the historic heart of the resort.

Surrounding Attractions

The villa sits in the most historically rich part of Karuizawa, and a number of related sites are within easy walking distance. The Shaw Memorial Chapel and the reconstructed Shaw House — Karuizawa's very first summer cottage — lie just a short walk away and offer essential context for understanding how the town developed. The lively Old Karuizawa Ginza shopping street is famous for its long-established bakeries, cafés, jam shops, and souvenir stores. For nature, the gently flowing Yagasaki Park, the popular Kumoba Pond (especially beautiful in autumn), and quiet forest walking paths are all within reach. A range of other registered cultural-property villas — including former cottages of foreign missionaries and Japanese statesmen — are scattered through the surrounding woods and can be enjoyed on a thoughtful self-guided architectural walk.