Ota Family Residence Main House

What the Ota Family Residence Main House Is

The Ota Family Residence Main House (太田家住宅主屋, Ōta-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a two-storey Machiya townhouse built around 1905 on the former Saigoku Kaidō highway in Saijo-Okamachi, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 4 February 2021.

The house faces south onto the old road. It has a frontage of 6 Ken, a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof laid with red sangawara pantiles, and a footprint of 201 square metres. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to about 1905 and records alterations in 1929.

This is the building you meet first. The Ota Family Residence Main House occupies the street edge of the lot, and behind it stand a tea room building, an annex, two storehouses, and a gate with its fences, all registered on the same day.

Why the Ota Family Residence Main House Was Registered

The Ota Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. That standard is less about rare carpentry than about the part a building plays in its streetscape.

Saijō was a market town long before the Edo era, and when the Saigoku Kaidō became the route for daimyo processions, the Hiroshima domain built an official inn there and the town prospered as a post station. With its heavy two-storey roof and latticed front, the Ota house still shows what a substantial townhouse on that road looked like. The Agency for Cultural Affairs itself describes it as a weighty townhouse that anchors the look of the old highway.

Its history adds another layer. A late Meiji townhouse was reworked in the early Showa era, and the result sets a modern material, black tile on the upper facade, above a traditional latticed ground floor. Which parts date from the 1929 work is not spelled out in the published records.

What to Look For

Three Treatments on the Ground Floor

A low lean-to roof, or Geya, runs the full width of the Ota Family Residence Main House. Beneath it the facade changes three times: the entrance at the east end, a flush lattice in the middle, and a projecting lattice bay on the west side. Both are lattices, but the projecting bay throws a deeper shadow, and that is the easiest way to tell them apart.

Black Tile Upstairs

The upper storey of the front is clad in black tile. Traditional townhouses were more often finished in lime plaster or clapboard, so the tile reads as a deliberate modern touch, and it sets up a sharp contrast with the red roof above.

The Kitchen Wing at the Back

The main body of the Ota Family Residence Main House runs parallel to the road, and a wing projects from the rear to hold the kitchen and other service rooms. It is a classic townhouse arrangement: a broad frontage to the street, with the working spaces pushed to the back.

Altar Room and Reception Room

According to the official record, the more formal side of the interior holds a Buddhist altar room alongside a Zashiki reception room. The interior is not open, so this is something to know rather than something to see.

Visiting the Ota Family Residence Main House

The Ota Family Residence Main House is a private home, and no public opening of the interior had been announced as of September 2026. You can see it only from the old highway.

For the full facade, stand on the opposite side of the road. From there the lattices, the black tile, and the big hipped roof all fit into one view, and glancing east you can also pick out the gable of the south storehouse set back behind the house.

Please remember that people live here. Do not linger at the entrance or peer inside, keep photographs to exterior shots from the road, and avoid catching residents in the frame.