Kozuki Family Residence

About the Kozuki Family Residence

The Kozuki Family Residence (上月家住宅, Kōzuki-ke Jūtaku) is a private house in Bozumachi, Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, built around 1930; seven of its buildings were registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on July 25, 2011.

The seven entries are the main house, a north and a west detached parlor, a tea house, a waiting arbor, a storehouse and the front gate, numbered consecutively from 28-0514 to 28-0520. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the main house, both parlors, the tea house and the storehouse to 1930 (Showa 5) and the gate and arbor to about the same year, which points to a household that put its whole compound in place at once.

The house sits in the city's residential grid about 600 metres northeast of the keep of Himeji Castle, in a straight line, and about 2 kilometres north-northeast of JR Himeji Station.

Public records describe each building's structure and position in detail but say nothing about who the Kozuki family were or why they built here. What can be said about the Kozuki Family Residence comes from the buildings themselves.

How the Seven Buildings Fit Together

Read in sequence, the official descriptions show the Kozuki Family Residence arranged around a single garden.

The front gate, a Yakuimon, stands at the middle of the south boundary, set back a little from the street. Beyond it, at the centre of the plot, is the two-storey main house, opened up with wide openings so its rooms look out on the garden around it.

A covered corridor runs north from the main house to the north detached parlor, and the storehouse stands just west of that parlor. To the southwest, an arched drum bridge carries the path from the main house to the west detached parlor, whose garden-side veranda has a railing capped with Giboshi finials above a base of random stonework.

The tea house occupies the garden's southwest corner, with the waiting arbor a few steps to its northeast, so the classic Roji sequence (wait in the arbor, then walk to the tea room) is built into the Kozuki garden. Even the storehouse is described by the Agency as part of the garden scenery.

What Was Registered, and Why

All seven buildings of the Kozuki Family Residence were entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) on July 25, 2011. The tea house was registered as a model of design; the other six as buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

• Main house (28-0514): timber, 2 storeys with single-storey sections, 223 square metres
• North detached parlor (28-0515): single-storey timber, 54 square metres
• West detached parlor (28-0516): single-storey timber, 56 square metres
• Tea house (28-0517): single-storey timber, 16 square metres
• Waiting arbor (28-0518): single-storey timber, 2.5 square metres
• Storehouse (28-0519): 2-storey earthen-walled storehouse, 23 square metres
• Front gate (28-0520): timber, 2.3 metres wide

Taken together, the group covers everything a substantial early-Showa town house was expected to provide: rooms for living and for receiving guests, a setting for tea, a fireproof store, and a gate that sets the tone from the street.

Visiting

The Kozuki Family Residence is privately owned and still lived in. It is not open to the public, and no public opening had been announced as of October 2026. The grounds and garden cannot be entered.

From the street you can see the front gate and little else. Because the gate is set back from the road, you can stand opposite it and take in its knotty cypress posts and copper roof; the main house, parlors and tea house lie behind it and are hard to make out from outside.

The lane in front is an ordinary residential street with no parking. If you stop to look or take a photo, keep it brief and stay out of the way of residents and passing traffic.