Shigeta Family Residence Main Building

One Main Building, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2001

Shigeta Family Residence Main Building (重田家住宅主屋, Shigeta-ke Jutaku Shuoku) stands at 42 Koizumi, Tamamura Town, Sawa District, Gunma Prefecture, a Meiji-period building entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 20 November 2001. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one building. The owner is Tamamura Town.

The structure is timber, two-storeyed, tiled, with a floor area of 207 square metres. The date field reads Meiji and the year field 1883.

A House and a Doctor's Surgery in One

One building serves two purposes.

The Agency opens by calling it a house and surgery belonging to a family of doctors over generations.

It continues that the interior is laid out in six rooms, with a waiting area set in the earth-floored space on the east and a consulting room to the west of it.

A place to wait and a place to be examined stand within the dwelling.

The residences met here so far are the former Konishi, Fukuda, Haba, Nikaido and Imose houses. All of them are places to live.

The Imose residence was an official inn, lodging daimyo and court nobles as well. That is an inn on a highway. This one takes in the practice of medicine.

The Same Name in Gunma and in Kagawa

Two registered properties carry this name.

This one stands in Tamamura Town, Gunma Prefecture: 1883, 207 square metres, timber and two-storeyed.

The other stands in Manno Town, Kagawa Prefecture: 1877, 158 square metres, timber and single-storeyed.

Six years apart, and different in storeys and in size. The one in Kagawa is described as a fine example of a farmhouse with eaves running all round.

With the Raigoji main halls, three buildings of one name stood in Matsusaka, Kumatori and Matsubara, all designated properties.

Here two registered properties share a name. Neither carries a location in its name, so they are told apart by prefecture.

The Entrance Marks the Standing of the House

One part of the building is said to express the family's position.

The Agency closes that the formal entrance near the centre of the front shows the standing of the house.

Such an entrance has a raised board between the earth floor and the rooms, and having one is what marks the standing.

At the Imose residence, standing was shown by the scale of the house and the careful finish of its members, in the manner of a samurai residence. That concerns the whole.

Here a single element is named. The building is 8 bays across and 5 deep, gabled, roofed in pantiles, and fully two-storeyed.

Lean-to roofs run along the south and west sides, carrying a veranda corridor around two faces of the building.

Visiting

The building stands at 42 Koizumi, Tamamura Town, Sawa District, Gunma Prefecture, owned by the town rather than by a private household.

On the same grounds, related entries name the west storehouse, the east storehouse, an outdoor privy, a grain store, a well housing, the front gate with its fence, and a rice store. With this building that makes eight.

At Ikinariya, ten buildings are registered; at Kasuga Shrine, eight or more. Registered properties are often divided building by building.

At the former Konishi residence and the Fukuda residence, a main house and its storehouses formed one property between them. Those are designated.

The town owns the building, so opening and hours follow its own arrangements. Check before travelling.