Akagi Family Residence

A Farmhouse at Hikino with Sixteen Registered Buildings

The Akagi Family Residence stands at 972 Hikino, Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, where 16 buildings were entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 2 March 2006. They are registered properties rather than designated ones. The main house dates from 1870, and the other 15 are given the Meiji range.

The 16 are the main house, a detached annex, the front gate, a guard's hut, a middle gate with walls, a west gate, 5 stores and sheds on the west, a workshop and a rice store on the east, the stone walls, and 2 walls.

Of the main house, the Agency records that it excels as farmhouse building in both quality and scale.

Stores Joined One to the Next Along the West Edge

On the west side of the grounds, buildings stand without a break.

The Agency places the west storehouse at the northern end of the west side. The miso store stands against its south side, the rice store against the south side of the miso store, and the warehouse against the south side of the rice store.

Each is placed by its northern neighbour in turn. Of the warehouse, the record says it has no north wall of its own, using the outer wall of the rice store instead: it takes its neighbour's wall as its own.

South of it stands a shed, and between the shed and the warehouse stands the west gate, its ridge set a little lower.

At Obaraya Harada Shoten, two buildings are placed by reference to one store, the document storehouse.

Here there is no single point of reference; it passes from neighbour to neighbour. The record says the rice store helps form the group of stores on the west, and the miso store makes a continuous prospect of stores.

A Guard's Hut Beside the Front Gate

Next to the gate stands a small building for keeping watch.

The Agency places the guard's hut north of the front gate, 1.5 bays by 1, with a lattice window on the east. It covers 6.0 square metres, the smallest of the 16.

The front gate is 2 bays wide, its posts 8 sun square, hung with double plank doors studded in 3 rows. It stands on 5 cut-stone steps, 0.9 metres above the road.

The east rice store, the record says, was used to hold rice paid as land tax.

The Oishi and Shigeta residences had gates too, but no guard's hut appears in their records.

Here a hut for a guard stands by the gate, and a store holds tax rice. The gate and the hut together form the front of the house, the record says.

Walls Told Apart by Number

Two walls carry names that are neither place nor use, but numbers.

Wall one runs along the east side north of the guard's hut and along the north side: a timber wall with a tiled roof, 68 metres long.

Wall two runs along the south side and the south-west corner: a timber wall roofed in sheet iron, 40 metres long.

The tiled wall and the iron-roofed wall are told apart as one and two. At the Oishi residence, walls are named by position.

The stone walls run round the grounds for 202 metres, counted as one place, and the manner of laying the stones changes from place to place.

Stone walls, wall one, wall two, and the middle gate with its walls together enclose the edge of the broad grounds.

A House Built Against the Maruyama River

Tajima no Hyakka Jiten, a regional encyclopedia, presents the Akagi Family Residence as a headman's estate that still shows its defences against flooding. The family served for generations as ōjōya, headmen over a group of villages, and the house keeps the form of a Meiji and Taisho landowner who farmed his own extensive holdings.

The site measures 40 metres east to west and 65 metres north to south, about 900 tsubo. The stone walls around it are almost all basalt, the ground inside is raised about 2 metres above its surroundings, and the house is said never to have flooded. The Agency's record gives the stone wall a height of 0.9 metres to 1.7 metres, so the figures differ.

On the west side, toward the Maruyama River, a bamboo grove was planted to slow floodwater, and its canes were cut for flood-fighting materials. A small boat is described as hanging under the eaves of a storehouse, ready to go out on patrol when the water rose.

The house is also the birthplace of Akagi Masao, remembered for his work in erosion and sediment control.

Visiting

The property is at 972 Hikino, Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture. All 16 carry the same address.

The main house, at 278 square metres, is the largest of the 16, about 46 times the guard's hut at 6.0 square metres. The west storehouse covers 148 square metres and the east workshop 174 square metres.

The Akagi Family Residence is a family home and is generally closed to the public.

On the grounds is the Akagi Masao Exhibition Hall, which opened in September 2013 and presents his work. According to its listing, it opens on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., admission is free, advance booking is required, and there is parking; allow about an hour. The listing comes from a 2018 article, so confirm with the hall before you go.

The nearest bus stop is Shimo-Hikino, about 3 minutes' walk away. Kokufu Station on the JR San'in Line is about 3.3 kilometres off.

In the Tanto district of the same city stands the Oishi residence, where 16 buildings were likewise registered.

A house of the same name in Tsuno, Miyazaki Prefecture, is a separate cultural property.