Soga Family Residence

A Silk Merchant's Plot on Honchō-dōri

The Soga Family Residence (曽我家住宅, Soga-ke Jūtaku) is the home of a silk-dealing and weaving family in Honchō 1-chōme, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, with buildings ranging from an Inari shrine of 1867 to a reception wing and gate of 1922; its main house, storehouse, new reception wing, Inari shrine and gate were entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2006.

A sixth building belongs to the same plot. The stone-walled weaving shed at the back, now listed as the Former Soga Textile Factory, was registered a little earlier, on 2 March 2006. Read together, the six tell the story of one household that lived at the front of its land and worked at the back.

The site lies on the west side of Honchō-dōri near the southern end of Honchō 1-chōme. The plot has roughly 23 metres of street frontage and runs back about 90 metres. That long, narrow shape follows the lot pattern of Kiryu Shinmachi, the town laid out here in 1591, and the Soga plot is one of the places where it still reads clearly on the ground.

From the Kakiage Family to the Soga Family

The founder of the Soga Family Residence as a Soga property was Soga Sukematsu, a native of Kashima District in Ishikawa Prefecture. He arrived in Kiryu in 1894, served an apprenticeship with a raw-silk dealer, and later made his fortune trading on the thread market. In 1917 he bought the land together with the buildings already standing on it.

The seller's side matters. Before the Soga family, the plot belonged to the Kakiage family, sake brewers. According to Kiryu City, the storehouse was built by the Kakiage household and already appears in a copperplate view of 1889. An ink inscription under the floor of the Inari shrine records its consecration in 1867 and names the Kakiage family as well. The Soga family, in other words, inherited a storehouse and a household shrine from the people before them.

In 1922, when the second head, Kiichirō, married, the family built a stone sawtooth-roofed weaving shed at the back of the plot. The new reception wing west of the storehouse and the stone gateposts on the street are thought to date from the same year. It was the moment the family business widened from dealing in silk to weaving it, and cloth was produced in the shed until around 1970.

How the Plot Is Laid Out

The buildings of the Soga Family Residence stand in a single line along the northern edge of the plot, running east to west: the main house on the street, the storehouse behind it, and the new reception wing beyond that. Their north walls join without a break, finished in white plaster or brick, and together they form a fire barrier along that whole side of the property.

The southern half is garden. Step through the gateposts at the centre of the frontage and the Inari shrine, protected by its outer sheath building, sits directly ahead, with the main house to its north. Past the garden comes a parking area, and past that, at the far western end, the five sawtooth ridges of the Former Soga Textile Factory.

Walking the plot from the street inward, you pass shop, reception rooms, storehouse, household shrine and factory in turn. The sequence shows plainly how a Kiryu weaving family used a single deep lot.

Visiting and Getting There

The Soga Family Residence is privately owned and the interiors are not open. It can be seen from Honchō-dōri only. Kiryu City asks visitors to the historic district not to enter private property and to obtain permission before taking photographs. From the street you get a clear view of the east face of the main house and the stone gateposts, with the shrine's sheath building visible through the gate.

The whole of Honchō 1-chōme and 2-chōme, with part of Tenjinchō 1-chōme, was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings (Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings) on 9 July 2012. The Soga Family Residence stands inside it.

From the north exit of JR Kiryu Station on the Ryōmō Line it is about 15 minutes on foot, or about 5 minutes by Orihime community bus or taxi. From Shin-Kiryu Station on the Tōbu Line, allow about 10 minutes by bus or taxi. There is no parking inside the preservation district, so use one of the paid town-centre car parks nearby.

The district's visitor base, Kiryu City's Machinaka Kōryūkan, is at 1-7-4 Honchō, a few doors from the Soga Family Residence. It opens from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (last entry 4:30 p.m.), closes on Tuesdays, charges no admission, and hands out maps and tourist information.