Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara)

About the Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara)

The Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara) (梶原家住宅（中西梶原）, Kajiwara-ke Jūtaku) is a family estate in the Tenjin district of Oshio, Himeji City, Hyogo Prefecture, where a main house built in 1922 and a storehouse built in 1842 and moved to the site in the late Taisho era were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2009.

"Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara" is the label Himeji City uses to distinguish this estate from a second Kajiwara Family Residence in the same town. About 250 meters to the southeast, in the Miyanomoto district, stands the estate the city calls "Nishi-Kajiwara", the home of a salt-field landowner, where 20 structures were registered in November of the same year. The sources available from the Agency for Cultural Affairs and Himeji City do not explain how the two Kajiwara households were related.

The two structures of the Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara) carry consecutive registration numbers, 28-0399 and 28-0400, and were registered on August 7, 2009.

Two Dates Written on Ridge Tags

Both buildings of the Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara) keep their munafuda, the wooden ridge tags on which builders recorded the date and their names. According to Himeji City, the main house tag reads "Taisho 11, eighth month, twentieth day" (1922) with the name of the carpenter Matani Bunkichi (間谷文吉, reading unconfirmed), and the storehouse tag reads "Tenpo 13, third month" (1842) with the name of the master builder Okamoto Gisuke (岡本儀輔, reading unconfirmed) of Matsubara village.

Eighty years separate the two buildings. Yet the storehouse was moved to its present site in the late Taisho era, close to the time the main house went up. It seems the family brought an older storehouse from elsewhere and set up the estate together with the new main house, though where it came from, and why, is not recorded.

How the Estate Is Arranged

The main house stands at the center of the plot. A large gable-entry hip-and-gable roof carries a cluster of smaller roofs over the entrance, an upper-floor wing and the kitchen, and the reception rooms line the north side, facing the garden. The storehouse stands northwest of the main house, with a canopy over its east front.

Both structures of the Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara) were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. Oshio grew rich on salt, and the large houses built by its salt-field owners still stand throughout the town; this estate is part of that townscape.

Visiting the Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara)

The Kajiwara Family Residence (Naka-Nishi-Kajiwara) is a private home, and there is no information that it accepts visitors. If you pass by, view it from the road and do not enter the grounds. How much can be seen from the street has not been checked on site.

The nearest station is Oshio on the Sanyo Electric Railway Main Line. The estate lies north of the station, roughly 200 meters in a straight line (estimated from coordinates). The Nishi-Kajiwara estate is east of the same station, and both are within a few minutes' walk of each other.

The structure of the main house and the storehouse is covered on each building's own page.