Shigehara Family Residence

About the Shigehara Family Residence

The Shigehara Family Residence (茂原家住宅, Shigehara-ke Jūtaku) is a sericulture farmhouse compound in Obata, Kanra Town, Gunma Prefecture, whose main house and three storehouses, built between the mid and late Edo period, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 31, 2003.

The surname is written with the same characters as Mobara, a city in Chiba Prefecture, which is how it often gets misread. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the reading as Shigehara. These four buildings are the only nationally registered structures in Kanra Town, and the town lists them together in its historic townscape plan.

Obata, a Castle Town Turned Silk Country

Obata was the seat of the small Obata domain. The Oda family, descendants of Oda Nobunaga, ruled it for eight generations and 152 years from 1616; the Matsudaira took over in 1767 and held it until the Meiji era. In 1642 the third Oda lord moved his administrative headquarters to Obata, and the daimyo garden of Rakusan-en was laid out with it. The Shigehara Family Residence stands roughly 1 kilometer south of that garden as the crow flies.

Kanra Town's plan traces the rise of silk here to the years around the opening of Yokohama in 1859. A cooperative reeling group, the Obata-gumi, was founded in 1878, and farms in the old merchant quarter steadily turned into silkworm-rearing households. Until the early Meiji years most families raised a single spring brood each year; from the mid-Meiji period summer and autumn broods spread and the cocoon harvest grew sharply.

The Shigehara main house belongs to that story. Its upper floor is given over to silkworms, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs cites it as a good example of a sericulture farmhouse.

Four Buildings and How They Fit Together

Pieced together from the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, the layout of the Shigehara Family Residence runs as follows. Dates and footprints come from the same source.

• The main house faces south. It is a two-storey timber building with a footprint of 207 square meters, built in the mid Edo period (1661 to 1750), and its roof was originally covered with wooden boards.
• The rice storehouse stands southeast of the main house, facing west, and forms the edge of the plot along the street. It is a Dozo-zukuri building of two storeys with a partial third, 55 square meters, from the late Edo period (1751 to 1829).
• The retirement storehouse adjoins the southwest side of the main house. It rises three storeys on 35 square meters and dates from the final decades of the Edo period (1830 to 1867).
• The west storehouse sits next to it on the southwest and closes off the southwest corner of the plot. Two storeys, 41 square meters, it is dated to the same final Edo decades on stylistic grounds.

The retirement storehouse has a canopy over its garden-side gable, and the west storehouse opens its doors to the garden on the east. Read together, those notes place a garden south of the main house, flanked by the rice storehouse on the east and the two storehouses on the west. The main house came first; the rice storehouse followed in the late Edo period and the other two at its very end.

All four were entered on the register on January 31, 2003, in the 35th round of registrations, with public notice on February 26 that year, under consecutive numbers 10-0096 to 10-0099. The reasons differ. The main house was registered as a model of form, while the three storehouses were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape.

Visiting the Shigehara Family Residence

The Shigehara Family Residence is a private home; both Kanra Town and Gunma Prefecture list the owner as a private individual. No public openings were found, and the grounds and interiors are closed to visitors.

What you can see from outside is mainly the rice storehouse, which stands on the street. How much of the main house and the two rear storehouses shows from the road has not been confirmed. Please keep photography to the public road and avoid blocking traffic or disturbing the residents.

The nearest station is Joshu-Fukushima on the Joshin Line, about 5 kilometers north of the house by road, so a taxi or car is the practical way to get there.