Oto Family Residence

About the Ōtō Family Residence

The Ōtō Family Residence (大藤家住宅, Oto Family Residence) in Shiraichi, Takaya-cho, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, is the former home and works of a family of distillers, and its main house, detached reception room and kettle house of around 1929 and a storehouse of the late Edo period became Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2022 and 2025.

The Ōtō made shochu and mirin, a business that has since closed. According to Higashihiroshima City, output at its height is said to have run to several hundred koku a year. Shiraichi held a large market every May, and on market day the family set up a stall in front of the house to sell mirin lees, which became one of the town's known specialties.

City sources differ on when the business began. The page announcing the 2025 registrations says the Ōtō took over shochu and mirin production at the end of the Meiji era from the Kihara, a wealthy merchant house trading as Daimonjiya. The city's page on the property says the business was founded in the Taisho era. The published material does not settle which is meant as the starting point.

Registered in Two Rounds

The Oto Family Residence entered the register in two stages. The main house on the street came first, on February 17, 2022, as register no. 34-0300.

The other three followed on March 13, 2025, numbered in sequence: the detached reception room 34-0318, the kettle house 34-0319 and the storehouse 34-0320.

Two criteria were applied. The main house, kettle house and storehouse were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape; the detached reception room alone was registered as a model of design. The city calls the residence representative of Shiraichi houses of the early Showa period and points to its unusual arrangement of buildings as part of what makes it distinctive.

How the Buildings Are Laid Out

The main house faces east onto the street of the Honmachi quarter, on the corner where it meets the lane called Nishinokawa-dori. The detached reception room stands to its west, linked by a 2-storey connecting corridor. Northwest of the main house, in the area where the brewery buildings once stood, is the kettle house, and at the western edge of the plot the storehouse fronts a lane on its south side. The kettle house alone has a separate lot number, 1058-2; the other three are at 1055.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the four as follows.

• Storehouse: late Edo period (1830 to 1868)
• Main house: around 1929, remodeled around 1975
• Detached reception room: around 1929
• Kettle house: around 1929

So the rooms for living and for guests went up in the same years as the building where the spirits were made. The Agency's note on the main house reads it as evidence of Shiraichi's prosperity in the early Showa period. The storehouse is the outlier, older than the rest by at least 60 years.

Visiting and Getting There

The Ōtō Family Residence is a privately owned townhouse and is not normally open. Higashihiroshima City asks visitors to keep to the outside and take care not to trouble the owner.

The interior opens for local events. It was among the Shiraichi townhouses given a special opening for the third Shiraichi Machiya Art Festival on November 29 and 30, 2025, and it was one of the venues when the Shiraichi Machiya Preservation Society held its second Machiya Hina Doll Festival on February 28 and March 1, 2026. Whether and when these events take place varies from year to year, so check the city's tourism site before you plan around one.

Shiraichi lies about 2 kilometers northwest of Shiraichi Station on the JR Sanyo Line. The city's guidance for the nearby Former Kihara Family Residence gives about 30 minutes on foot from the station, about 5 minutes by taxi, or about 20 minutes by car from the Saijo or Kochi interchange on the Sanyo Expressway. That house has no parking of its own, and the city directs drivers to the Shiraichi Tanbo car park about 200 meters to its south. The Oto Family Residence is in the same central part of Shiraichi, and the way to reach it is on foot through the old streets.