Former Tamaoki Family Residence

What Is the Former Tamaoki Family Residence?

The Former Tamaoki Family Residence (旧玉置家住宅, Kyū Tamaoki-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant townhouse complex in Honmachi 2-chome, Miki City, Hyogo Prefecture, built in 1826 as a banknote office of the Tatebayashi domain and home to the Tamaoki family from 1875; six of its buildings were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 14, 2002.

The six are the main house, the annex, the corridor and three storehouses, north, east and west. They carry the consecutive registration numbers 28-0095 to 28-0100, and all six were listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property for their contribution to the historic landscape. Miki City owns every one of them and runs the Former Tamaoki Family Residence as a free museum and a base for local tourist guides.

A note on the name: the family name is read Tamaoki, not Tamaki. That is the reading given by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and it is the one used on site.

From Domain Banknote Office to Family Home

From 1747 to 1842 the town of Miki was an outlying territory of the Tatebayashi domain, whose castle stood far away in Joshu, present-day Gunma Prefecture. Miki City's account runs like this: Miki's hardware trade took off in the 1780s, and in 1823 the domain opened a banknote office in the town's Nakamachi district as part of an effort to repair its finances. Three years later, in 1826, the office moved to the site of the Former Tamaoki Family Residence.

A kitte kaisho, as the office was called, issued kitte-fuda, the domain's paper notes, exchanged them for gold and silver and made loans. Miki City likens it to a modern bank. The Miki City History Museum notes that a ridge tablet in the main house still bears the date Bunsei 9, the Japanese era year that corresponds to 1826.

In 1875 the building was sold off to the Tamaoki family and became their home. According to the city, the first head of the family, Taiki, and the third, Fukuzo, added the annex and the corridor that links it to the house. The city divides the property into two phases: the 1826 buildings, meaning the two street-side blocks of the main house and one storehouse on the courtyard, and everything the family added after the Meiji Restoration.

The Layout of the Former Tamaoki Family Residence

The plot is long and narrow, running north to south between the old highway on the south and the Minogawa River on the north. Hyogo Prefecture's landscape guidelines place it near the point where the Arima road and the Himeji road meet. The main house sits at the south end and faces the street, its front block joined to a rear block of formal rooms by a shikidai entrance hall.

From the earth-floored work area of the main house, a line of service rooms runs north like a long passage. The east storehouse stands at its far end, and beyond a back gate the north storehouse closes the line. On the west side, the corridor runs north from the rear block to the annex. Between them lies a courtyard enclosed on all four sides: the veranda of the main house, the corridor, the south veranda of the annex and the service wing on the east.

The west storehouse stands north of a western extension to the rear block. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it sits on what was the neighboring plot, so its position records how the Tamaoki family widened the property westward. At the north end, the north storehouse and the annex face the river and give this stretch of the bank its character.

Visitors enter through the main house on the street side. Walking on through the formal rooms, the corridor and the annex roughly follows the order in which the buildings went up, from the Edo-period office to the Meiji family home. The storehouses are viewed from outside, from the courtyard and the river side.

Dating the Former Tamaoki Family Residence

The sources do not agree on every date. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the main house as late Edo, with a late Meiji extension, and dates the other five buildings to the late Meiji period.

Miki City and its history museum date the main house to 1826. They also describe one storehouse on the courtyard behind the house as Edo-period work like the main house, with the koto-bridge crest of the Matsudaira family, lords of Tatebayashi, on its door. All three registered storehouses are late Meiji in the government record, and the published sources do not make clear which storehouse the city has in mind. It is a good question to put to the guides on site.

Visiting the Former Tamaoki Family Residence

Admission to the Former Tamaoki Family Residence is free. It opens from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and is closed on Tuesdays. Volunteer guides are on hand on Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and a small cafe opens on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. The house may also close over the New Year and the Obon holidays (all checked with Miki City on October 2, 2026).

The city's tourism site gives the walk from Miki-Kaminomaru Station on the Kobe Electric Railway Ao Line as 7 minutes. The city's access map also shows a route from Miki Station, on the north bank of the river, across the bridge. By car it is about 4 kilometers from the Miki-Ono interchange on the Sanyo Expressway, and there is parking for 20 cars on the east side of the Miki City Tourist Association office.

The two floors of the annex and the outer garden can be booked, at a charge of 1,000 yen a day each to cover utilities, with an application at City Hall by the day before. Volunteers also run tourist information, a cafe and a project deciphering old documents found inside sliding doors, which makes the house a natural starting point for a walk around old Miki. Enquiries go to the Miki City Tourism Promotion Division (0794-82-2000).