Higashitada Mushoan Main House

About the Higashitada Mushoan Main House

The Higashitada Mushoan Main House (東多田夢勝庵主屋, Higashitada Mushōan Shuoku) is the late Edo-period farmhouse at the heart of a former village headman's estate in Higashitada 2-chome, Kawanishi City, Hyogo Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2019.

It stands at the back of the plot, facing south. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a single-storey timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of 172 square metres. It is dated to the late Edo period, 1751 to 1830 in the agency's year field, and was altered around 1935 and again around 1969.

Plastered Walls Above the Lean-tos

The roof is hip-and-gable in form and laid with pantiles. The eaves are built in the Degeta-zukuri manner: a purlin carried on projecting brackets supports the eave edge, so the roof reaches well forward and throws a deep shadow across the front.

The detail to look for on the Higashitada Mushoan Main House is the band of wall above its Geya, the lean-to roofs wrapped around all four sides. That band is plastered solid and pierced with Mushiko-mado, small slatted windows. The house has only one floor, yet with a second tier of plastered wall and windows showing above the lean-tos, its front reads almost like a two-storey building.

Windows of this kind are usually associated with town houses. Here they sit on a large farmhouse among rice fields, which probably served to signal the standing of the headman's family.

A Six-Room Plan

Inside, the Higashitada Mushoan Main House has an earth-floored Doma on the east. To the west are raised rooms in two rows of three, front and back, a six-room plan. The room at the upper end of the front row, the south-west corner farthest from the doma, is the Zashiki, the formal reception room.

Rank rises as you move west from the work floor, and the best room sits on the south side facing the forecourt. A guest arriving through the gatehouse and the garden gate would most likely have been shown straight into it. Daily work and formal hospitality share one roof, as befits a headman's house.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Higashitada Mushoan Main House was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The agency calls it a large farmhouse at the core of the traditional village landscape of a settlement on the east side of the Ina River.

At 172 square metres it is far larger than the estate's gatehouse (122 square metres) or its Storehouse (22 square metres), and the gates and walls of Higashitada Mushoan are arranged around it.

Seeing the Main House

The Higashitada Mushoan Main House belongs to a private company, and no public opening or interior viewing has been announced (checked October 2026). The rooms and the doma cannot be visited.

Because the house stands at the back of the plot behind the gatehouse and garden wall, probably only its hip-and-gable roof and the windows above the lean-tos can be seen from the road. Please photograph from the public road only. Directions are on the Higashitada Mushoan page.