Miyake Family Residence Main House

About the Miyake Family Residence Main House

The Miyake Family Residence Main House (三宅家住宅主屋, Miyake-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo-period merchant's house, dated to between 1751 and 1830, in Inarimachi, Kaita Town, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, and was entered on the register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on May 2, 2017. It was altered in the mid-Meiji era, between 1883 and 1897, and has a building area of 125 square meters.

The house stands on the south side of the old San'yōdō highway, better known locally as the Saigoku Kaidō, and turns its gable end to the road. The pantiled roof (Sangawara-buki) is a simple gable (Kirizuma-zukuri), and the entrance is on the gable side, an arrangement called Tsumairi. Upstairs is a Tsushi-nikai, a low half-height floor.

Kaita Town notes that the date comes from the building's form and techniques rather than from an inscription, so the late Edo attribution is an estimate.

Why It Was Registered

The Miyake Family Residence Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out its street front and credits the house with keeping the historic character of the highway.

Kaita grew up as a post town on the Saigoku Kaidō, and merchants' houses once lined both sides of the road. Kaita Town counts the Miyake estate, together with the Former Chiba Family Residence, among the very few Edo-period townhouses left in Kaita. With so little else surviving, this is one of the last places where a merchant's shop front still faces the old road.

The house was not judged on its own. Hiroshima Prefecture's history portal explains that it was registered because, together with the rear gate and the storehouses behind it, it preserves the full layout of a merchant's compound.

What to Look For

A plastered front that shows its frame

Look first at the upper floor of the Miyake main house. The wall is thickly plastered over in the fire-resistant manner Japanese builders call nurigome (Nuriya-zukuri), yet the outlines of the posts and beams have been modeled into the plaster surface. Hiroshima Prefecture picks out this finish as the house's most distinctive feature.

A plastered wall could simply have been left flat. Drawing the frame back onto it was a choice aimed at the people passing on the highway.

A deep lean-to eave

Below, a broad lean-to roof (Geya) projects 1 Ken from the front. It shelters the shop floor and draws passers-by in under the eaves. Together, the plastered upper wall and the projecting eave divide the facade of the Miyake Family Residence Main House into two clear bands.

A through passage and four rooms in a row

The interior is private, but the Agency's description gives the plan. An earthen-floored passage (Doma) runs the full depth of the house on the east side. West of it, four rooms follow one another from front to back: the shop (mise), the entrance room (genkan), the middle room (nakanoma) and the formal room (zashiki). Trade happened at the street end; family life and the reception of guests moved further back, the standard sequence of a Machiya townhouse.

Visiting

The Miyake Family Residence Main House is a private home, and the interior is closed (checked September 27, 2026). Its front, however, faces the old Saigoku Kaidō, so the plastered upper floor and the deep eave can be seen from the street. Of the six registered buildings, this is the one whose design reads most clearly from outside.

The lines of the posts and beams on the upper floor are easier to pick out from across the road than from close up. There is no posted rule on photography, but please do not aim a camera into the shop front or through the windows. The branch family's house adjoins it on the east; Kaita Town says part of it was built at the end of the Edo period as a shop for the main family, so the two together give a sense of the old row of shops.