Kato Family Residence (Himeji)

About the Kato Family Residence in Himeji

The Kato Family Residence (加藤家住宅, Katō-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant family's compound in Aboshi-ku Yokohama, Himeji City, Hyogo Prefecture, where a main house built in 1862 and seven other structures from the late Edo and Meiji periods were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2009.

Himeji City describes the Kato family as freight carriers in the Edo period who turned to soy sauce brewing, among other trades, after the Meiji Restoration. The house stands in the old town of Aboshi near the mouth of the Ibo River, and the Hamazashiki on the north edge of the plot looks west toward the water. The district name Yokohama (余子浜) has nothing to do with the port city near Tokyo. Because other Kato Family Residences elsewhere in Japan are also registered, this site lists the Himeji compound as the Kato Family Residence (Himeji).

Yokohama in Aboshi and the Kato Family Residence

Yokohama grew up on the left bank of the lower Ibo River and was one of the three villages that made up Aboshi in the Edo period. According to the Nihon Rekishi Chimei Taikei, a document thought to date from 1487 already lists a "Yokohama village" as one of 28 villages of the Fukui estate. The characters have changed since then, but the reading has not.

The Kato Family Residence occupies a corner of the district close to the river. Beyond the line about freight and soy sauce, neither the city nor the Agency for Cultural Affairs names the builder or describes the scale of the business. The buildings themselves are the best record of the family's most prosperous years.

The Eight Registered Buildings of the Kato Family Residence

All eight buildings of the Kato Family Residence were registered on January 8, 2009, under consecutive numbers 28-0375 to 28-0382, each for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the following dates and sizes.

• Main House: 1862, altered twice in the Meiji period. Wood, single-storey with a partial second floor, tiled roof, 279 m²
• Detached Room: 1892, altered in 1899 and 2004. Wood, single-storey, tiled roof, 51 m²
• Inner Storehouse: 1899. Two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse, tiled roof, 26 m²
• Hamazashiki: 1851, extended in 1874, moved and altered in 1958. Wood, two storeys, tiled roof, 62 m²
• Guardian Shrine: Meiji period. Wood, copper roof, 0.31 m²
• Nagayamon Gate: 1864, altered in the early Showa period. Wood, single-storey with a partial second floor, tiled roof, 96 m², with a kinin-guchi entrance
• Bathhouse and Setchin: late Edo period. Wood, single-storey, tiled roof, 10 m², with a namako-plastered wall and a middle gate
• West Wall: late Edo period, repaired in 1980. Wood, tiled roof, 11 m long, with a privy

Read in order, the dates show the compound taking shape in little more than a decade at the end of the shogunate, from the Hamazashiki of 1851 to the gate of 1864, with the Detached Room, the Inner Storehouse and the shrine added under Meiji. The Hamazashiki was moved in 1958, but the sources do not say where it stood before.

How the Kato Family Residence Is Laid Out

The Kato Family Residence faces south. A 20-meter Nagayamon gatehouse runs along the southern edge of the plot, and its opening lines up almost exactly with the Shikidai formal entrance at the center of the main house, so a guest walking through the gate is led straight to the front door.

The Bathhouse and Setchin is built against the back of the gate. Its Namako-kabe wall continues north as a plastered fence, broken by a middle gate of cut stone set up in the shape of a torii, which opens beside the formal entrance. From the western part of the gatehouse, the West Wall, with a privy built into it, runs north.

The main house takes the middle of the plot. A corridor links it to the Detached Room on the northeast, and behind it the Inner Storehouse stands beside the veranda passage leading to the bath. Next to the storehouse, on the north edge, sits the Hamazashiki, and a tiny shrine stands east of the main house. Gate at the front, living quarters in the middle, storehouse and guest rooms at the back. Each building has its own page with details.

Visiting the Kato Family Residence

The Kato Family Residence is privately owned. Neither Himeji City nor the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists any open days or visitor arrangements, and the interiors are not open to the public. If you come, stay outside the property and look from the street. The gate that forms the formal front is on the south side, so that is where to stand. Please be considerate of the residents when taking photographs.

The nearest station is Sanyo Aboshi, the terminus of the Sanyo Electric Railway Aboshi Line. From Sanyo Himeji Station, take the main line to Shikama and change to the Aboshi Line; the trip takes about 30 minutes including the transfer. The Kato Family Residence lies southwest of the station, roughly 500 meters in a straight line, or about a 10-minute walk.