Ota Family Residence

About the Ota Family Residence

The Ota Family Residence (太田家住宅, Ōta-ke Jūtaku) is a townhouse estate on the former Saigoku Kaidō highway in Saijo-Okamachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, where a main house built around 1905 and five further structures were entered together on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 4 February 2021.

Japan registers these buildings one at a time, so the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists six separate entries: the main house, the south storehouse, the tea room building, the annex, the north storehouse, and the gate and fence. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 34-0292 to 34-0297, and all six share a single address, 778-4 Saijo-Okamachi. Read as one property, the Ota Family Residence makes far more sense than any single entry does on its own.

One point of confusion is worth clearing up early. Hiroshima Prefecture has a second, much older Ota Family Residence, an Edo-period merchant house in the port town of Tomo in Fukuyama City. The two are unrelated. This page covers the Ota Family Residence in Saijō, whose main house dates from the late Meiji era and whose other buildings mostly date from the early Showa era.

Saijō and the Old Saigoku Kaidō

Saijō has a long pedigree. The provincial temple of Aki, Aki Kokubun-ji, was founded here in the Nara period, and even before the Edo era the town was known as Yokkaichi, a name that points to its regular market days. Once the Saigoku Kaidō became the route for daimyo processions to and from Edo, the Hiroshima domain built an official inn, the ochaya or honjin, in the town, and Saijō grew into a busy post station.

The Ota Family Residence Main House faces that road from the north side, its six-bay frontage, red-tiled roof, and latticed ground floor recalling the days when large townhouses lined the route. All six structures were registered under the same criterion: that they contribute to the historic landscape of the nation. The emphasis falls less on any single building than on the way the whole lot, from the street-front house to the storehouses, reception rooms, and gate behind it, shapes the streetscape.

How the Ota Family Residence Is Laid Out

The lot runs deep, stretching north from the old highway. Following the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions and the recorded positions of each building, the Ota Family Residence unfolds from south to north roughly as follows.

• Main House: the street-front Machiya facing south onto the highway, built around 1905 and altered in 1929.
• South Storehouse: a two-storey storehouse northeast of the main house, set back a little from the road.
• Tea Room Building: a sukiya-style tea pavilion between the main house and the annex, linked to both by covered corridors.
• Annex: a reception wing in the northwest corner, opening onto the garden to the south through glazed doors.
• North Storehouse: a late Meiji storehouse in the northeast corner, moved to its present site in the early Showa era.
• Gate and Fence: a Yakuimon gate on the north side of the lot, toward the east, plus the outer fence around the estate and an inner fence dividing path and garden.

The main house and south storehouse face the street, the tea room, annex, and garden sit further in, and the north storehouse and gate close off the rear, so the buildings grow more formal and more private the deeper you go. Note, too, that the gate opens to the north rather than onto the highway.

The dates tell a similar story. Only the main house and the north storehouse belong to the Meiji era. The tea room building, the annex, the south storehouse, and the gate and fence are dated to the early Showa era, between 1926 and 1945. A Meiji townhouse formed the core, and over the following decades the family added the inner rooms, a second storehouse, and a proper gate.

Visiting the Ota Family Residence

The Ota Family Residence is a private home, and no public opening of any of the six buildings had been announced as of September 2026. You can see it only from the public road. Higashihiroshima City notes that some registered properties in the city are closed to visitors or open only on conditions, and directs enquiries to its Cultural Affairs Division on 082-420-0977.

The estate lies southwest of JR Saijō Station on the Sanyo Main Line, about 400 metres away in a straight line, so it is an easy walk. From the old highway you can take in the front of the main house and the south gable of the south storehouse; from the lane on the north side you can see the gate and outer fence. The tea room building and the annex stand inside the lot and are largely hidden from the road. There is no visitor parking, so walking from the station is the simplest option.

People still live here. Please do not linger at the gate or peer over the fences, and keep photography to exterior shots taken from the road.