Kusaka Family Residence (Asago)

A landowner's compound in the hills of southern Tajima

The Kusaka Family Residence (Asago) (日下家住宅, Kusaka-ke Jūtaku) in Awaga, Santo-cho, Asago City, Hyogo Prefecture, is the walled compound of an old landowning family whose main house was built in 1799; on January 26, 2011, 21 of its buildings, gates, walls and retaining walls were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties. Put up and added to between the late Edo period and the early Showa era, the whole household survives on one platform of stone in a quiet hill village.

The Kusaka were major landowners in Awaga for generations, and in the modern era the family is said to have been involved in silk reeling and in founding a bank. The compound covers roughly 3,300 square metres. Besides the living quarters, it holds the buildings that ran the family business and household: a counting house, a forestry company office, storehouses, a stable and a charcoal shed.

A separate registration in Hibarigaoka, Takarazuka, carries the same Japanese name; it is a different house and a different family property.

A level site built out of stone

A river runs along the north side of the Kusaka Family Residence, and the ground falls away toward it. To make a level platform, the family raised stone retaining walls, 109 metres in total and up to 5 metres high. The masonry changes as you walk along it, from random rubble to fitted wedge-shaped stones laid on the diagonal, a record of repairs and extensions that ran from the late Edo period into the Showa era.

The large main house stands in the middle of the site and faces west. The kitchen wing runs east from it, and beyond that, on the street side, the 1939 new wing sits high on its own stone base. The inner storehouse is joined to the south side of the main house, the parlor wing lies to the southeast facing the garden, and a tiny Konpira shrine stands in the southwest corner of the garden.

The working buildings cluster in the northwest. The former counting house, the former Kusaka forestry office and the Taisho storehouse line up from east to west, with the stable in the far northwest corner. The middle gate divides the service passage from the garden between the main house and the guest bathhouse, and west of the bathhouse come the treasure storehouse and the charcoal shed.

Gates and walls, front and back

The front gate opens between the stable and the charcoal shed: a single-bay yakuimon in zelkova wood. The two outbuildings flanking it have thick plastered walls, and together with the gate they give the entrance a solid, formal face. From the south end of the charcoal shed, a long range of storage sheds runs west and then turns south along the street, its street side raised on stone and closed with plastered walls.

Southwest of the front gate, an early Showa wooden fence encloses the garden west of the charcoal shed. An Edo-period earthen wall 88 metres long wraps the south side and the southern half of the east side. Near the north end of the east side, the back gate of 1839 gives the rear of the compound a dignified entrance of its own.

The 21 registered structures

The registration covers the main house, kitchen wing, new wing, inner storehouse, parlor wing, Konpira shrine, guest bathhouse, former counting house, former Kusaka forestry office, Taisho storehouse, treasure storehouse, stable, charcoal shed, storage sheds, well, front gate, middle gate, back gate, wooden fence, earthen wall and stone walls, numbered 28-0492 to 28-0512. The main house was registered as a model of form; the other 20 as contributing to the historic landscape.

By the Agency for Cultural Affairs' dating, 11 are Edo period, 3 Meiji, 3 Taisho and 4 early Showa. The main house, inner storehouse and parlor wing were all remodelled more than once between the Meiji and Showa eras, so the compound reads as a large Edo farmhouse that kept being updated. The late Taisho years and 1939 brought most of the modern touches: a bath lined with small ceramic tiles in the kitchen wing, a guest bathhouse in sukiya taste and a Western-style office for the family forestry business.

Visiting

The Kusaka Family Residence is still a private home and is not open to the public. The grounds and interiors cannot be visited.

What can be seen from the road is limited to the outer stone walls and earthen wall, the plastered street side of the storage sheds, the exterior of the new wing, and the front and back gates. These sit right against a family's daily life, so look in passing rather than lingering at the gates or peering into the grounds, and if you take photographs, keep clear of residents and traffic.

Getting there

The Nishitani district of Awaga lies in the hills about 4 kilometres southeast, in a straight line, of Yanase Station on the JR San'in Line. It is too far to walk comfortably, so a car or taxi is the practical choice; drivers should use the Santo interchange on the Kitakinki-Toyooka Expressway. As a private house rather than a visitor site, it has no parking for visitors.