Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building (Former Fujii Family Residence)

A farming family's mansion, reopened as a museum

The Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building (Former Fujii Family Residence) (コヤノ美術館西脇館（旧藤井家住宅）, Koyano Bijutsukan Nishiwaki-kan) is the estate of the Fujii, a wealthy landowning family, in Ichihara-cho, Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture; its main house dates from 1890, and nine of its buildings, gates and walls are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan. Local guides also call it the Fujii Shigekichi residence or simply "the mansion of the gōnō," the landowning rural elite of the Meiji era.

The museum's operator, Koyano Co., Ltd., describes the Fujii as a family that put money into building the Kajiya railway line and helped found the Nishiwaki Commercial Bank. It also repeats a family story that Itō Hirobumi, Japan's first prime minister, once stayed the night. That visit is presented as household tradition; no published record of it has been located.

After the family left, the estate stood empty for years. Koyano, an Osaka company best known for a fluororesin surface coating, repaired the floors and walls between 2005 and 2008 while keeping the original Meiji-era doors, posts and step boards, and opened the house as a museum in August 2008. Rooms throughout the estate now hold rotating, themed displays of antiques and folk objects collected by the director, Koyano Tatsuo; past themes have included ukiyo-e prints, toys and souvenirs of Expo '70.

One practical warning. The Koyano Museum of Art also has a main branch inside the company's head office in Miyakojima, Osaka, with different hours and fees. The museum itself notes that typing "Koyano Museum" into a car navigation system can send you to Osaka, so search by the address, 139 Ichihara-cho, Nishiwaki.

Nine registrations, built over three decades

The Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building (Former Fujii Family Residence) was registered in two stages. The main house came first, on December 24, 2013 (registration no. 28-0565). The remaining eight structures followed together on November 17, 2015 (nos. 28-0627 to 28-0634), which brought every building, gate and wall on the site into the Registered Tangible Cultural Property system.

Put in date order, the estate grew over roughly thirty years. The 1890 main house is the oldest piece. The front gate and walls, the garden gate and walls, the south side gate and walls, the rice storehouse and the kimono storehouse were all added in the late Meiji period. In the late Taisho years the family ran a long corridor westward from the main house, attached a small Western-style building and a bathroom and toilet block along its south side, and finished it with a two-storey detached wing completed in 1922. You can read the household's priorities in that sequence: first the farmhouse and its storage, then a frontage of gates and walls, and finally a reception room, a study and a tiled bath.

The registrations cite different criteria. The main house, storehouses, gates and walls were judged to contribute to the historic landscape. The Western-style building and the detached wing were registered as models of design, and the bathroom and toilet block as something that would be difficult to reproduce.

Hyogo Prefecture separately added the estate to its list of Important Landscape Buildings in its tenth round of selections for fiscal 2016; the Nishiwaki tourism association gives the year as 2017.

How the estate is laid out

The grounds cover about 3,000 square meters, and the Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building faces a road on its east side. What you see from that road is the 2.5-meter front gate, the tall board-faced walls running off on either side, and, south of the gate, the gable end of the rice storehouse. Visitors enter through the front gate.

Just inside, a smaller garden gate and wall run from the center of the main house to a point north of the front gate, splitting the approach to the entrance from the garden in front of the reception rooms. The main house stands in the middle of the plot facing east. To its south, the south side gate and a wall about 4 meters high close off the southern edge, and the kimono storehouse sits northwest of the house around an inner courtyard.

A straight corridor, which the museum puts at about 20 meters, leads west from the main house. The Western-style building opens off the south side of its eastern half and the bath and toilet block off its western half, and the corridor ends at the detached wing. Staff guide each group through the house, usually working west from the main house along the corridor and turning back at the detached wing. Each structure has its own page with details on what to look for.

Opening days, admission and photography

The Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building (Former Fujii Family Residence) opens on Sundays only, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closing at 4 p.m. from December through February. National holidays that do not fall on a Sunday are closing days, and the museum shuts over the New Year period to change exhibits. On weekdays and Saturdays it opens by reservation: a flat 16,000 yen for up to 17 people, or 900 yen per person for groups of 18 or more. Heavy rain, typhoons or earthquakes can force a same-day closure, which is announced on the company's X account (@koyafron).

Admission, which the museum calls a contribution, is 1,000 yen for adults and 300 yen for elementary and junior high school students, with groups of 18 or more paying 900 yen each. The adult rate rose from 800 yen on January 11, 2025, so older guidebooks may be out of date. An annual pass costs 2,800 yen. All visits are guided, and a full tour takes one to two hours.

Photography is allowed inside. Flash is not, apart from a camera's built-in flash for snapshots, and tripods are not permitted; drones and other unmanned aircraft may not be flown over the grounds, including the parking lot. Posting your photos on social media is fine, but commercial shoots need prior arrangement. The museum also takes bookings for pre-wedding and cosplay shoots, which exclude the storehouse interiors, the attic room and the office.

A Hina doll display of Taisho and Showa-era figures fills the rooms from mid-February to mid-April. On Saturdays from December through February, a reservation-only Night Museum opens the lit-up house after dark.

Opening days, prices and photography rules were checked on the museum's official site on October 4, 2026.

Getting there

The nearest station is Nishiwakishi on the JR Kakogawa Line. From there the Koyano Museum of Art Nishiwaki Building is about 10 minutes by taxi or 20 minutes by city bus, which runs roughly once an hour, so check the return times before you set off. Shinki Bus highway coaches run directly from Osaka, Shin-Osaka and Sannomiya stations to the Nishiwaki (Apika) stop, about 7 minutes from the museum by taxi or 20 minutes by city bus.

By car, allow about 15 minutes from the Takino-Yashiro interchange on the Chugoku Expressway. The museum has its own parking lot, large enough for tour buses.

Right beside the estate stands the Kajiya Line Ichihara Station Memorial Hall, run by the city. It recreates the station building that opened in 1921 when the Banshu Railway was extended here; the line later became the national railways' Kajiya Line and closed at the end of March 1990. The station of the railway the Fujii are said to have supported stood almost at their door. In spring the cherry trees in front of the memorial hall bloom, and the museum recommends visiting then.