Kusaka Family Residence (Takarazuka)

A 1920s suburban house on the Hibarigaoka slope

The Kusaka Family Residence (Takarazuka) (日下家住宅, Kusaka-ke Jūtaku) in Hibarigaoka, Takarazuka City, Hyogo Prefecture, is a suburban house built around 1927 whose main house and three gates (front, middle and east) were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 29, 2019. It stands in the residential hills north of Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki Station on the Hankyu Takarazuka Line, on a site cut into an east-facing slope.

The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended the four for registration on November 16, 2018, describing a suburban house that is Western outside and a blend of Japanese and Western inside, and that conveys how the urban middle class lived in the early Showa era. What sets it apart is that the gates leading up to the house were registered along with the house itself.

A separate registration in Awaga, Asago City, carries the same Japanese name; it is an Edo-period landowner's compound with 21 registered structures and is not connected to this house.

Three gates up the hill

The main house sits in the middle of the plot with its steep gable end turned east as the façade. It is timber framed, 2 storeys with a partial third, roofed in Western-style tiles, and the northern half of the front carries a glazed conservatory.

From the street you enter at the southeast corner through the front gate: low concrete posts with no doors, finished in exposed pebble aggregate with a skirting of flat teppei stone. It is a light, open entrance. Stepped paths climb from there to the middle gate halfway up, where 2.1-metre posts are faced with teppei stone in a checkerboard pattern and topped with lamps, dressing up the approach to the house.

Toward the south end of the east side is the east gate, a service entrance with crazy-paved stone posts and a pair of iron doors. With the front-garden trees, it is part of the streetscape of the neighbourhood. Each gate is a little more formal than the last as you climb, and the eye is drawn up to the gable of the house, which is why the house and its gates make sense only as a set.

The four registered structures

The registration covers the main house, front gate, middle gate and east gate, numbered 28-703 to 28-706. The main house was registered as a model of form; the three gates as contributing to the historic landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the main house to about 1927, with alterations in the Showa 20s (around and after the end of the Second World War), in 1985 and in 1999. The front and middle gates are early Showa and the east gate is from the Showa 20s; all three are concrete. The Agency lists the main house under the cadastral address 2-136 Nagaoyama, Kirihata, and the gates under 64 and 65 Hibarigaoka 1-chome.

Visiting

The Kusaka Family Residence is a private home, and as of October 2026 there is no public opening on record. The grounds and interior cannot be visited.

The front gate and the east gate both face the street on the east side, so the gates can be seen from the road. This is one house among many on a quiet residential street; avoid lingering or looking past the gates, and if you take photographs, be considerate of the residents and neighbours.

Getting there

The nearest station is Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki on the Hankyu Takarazuka Line, and the house is in the Hibarigaoka residential area on the north side of the station. The neighbourhood is laid out on a slope, so train and walking are the best way to come. As a private house rather than a visitor site, it has no parking for visitors.