A Sanda House That Arrived Before the Fashion
Maeda Family Residence Main House (前田家住宅主屋, Maedake Jūtaku Shuoku, also written Maeda-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey timber dwelling at Yashikimachi in Sanda City, Hyōgo Prefecture, completed in 1926 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 4 December 2000. The building covers 108 square metres and carries a roof of sangawara pantiles.
The south wall is what people remember. A row of semicircular arched windows runs along it, and at the north-east corner the second-floor structure is carried on corbel brackets so that the upper storey steps out beyond the wall below. Agency for Cultural Affairs records state that the outer walls were originally finished in mortar with the aggregate washed back to expose the pebbles, and that red tiles were laid on the roof. Taken together, the effect reads as Spanish.
The date is the interesting part. That Spanish manner swept the Hanshin corridor between Osaka and Kobe during the early Shōwa years, filling Ashiya and Mikage with pale walls and round-headed openings. Sanda lies north of the Rokkō range, outside that belt, and this house was finished in the last year of Taishō. The national register calls it an early instance of the style.
The Architect Behind the Arches
Architectural research attributes the design to Nishimura Isaku (1884-1963) working through his own practice, Nishimura Kenchiku Jimusho. Nishimura is remembered in Japan chiefly as the founder of Bunka Gakuin, a progressive Tokyo school, and as an essayist who argued that a house should be arranged around the family rather than around receiving guests. His architectural output is less well known. A study by Kawashima Tomoo, published by the Hyōgo Association of Architectural Firms, counts roughly 140 designs nationwide and identifies about 70 of them; the Sanda house is the one surviving example in the Hanshin region, the others having been lost to the 1938 floods, wartime bombing and later redevelopment. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry itself records no designer, so the attribution rests on this scholarship and on the family's own records.
The client was Maeda Keiji, then forty-one, who had built a fortune farming on the Korean peninsula and brought his wife and children back to Sanda so that they could be schooled near his home district. During a recent survey a ridge tag was found in the roof space listing nine craftsmen with their birthplaces. Most came from the far south of Wakayama Prefecture, Nishimura's own country, with one carpenter from Sanda itself. The family also holds twenty sheets of copied working drawings, dimensioned in the old shaku system rather than in metres.
Those drawings record something unexpected for a provincial house of 1926: a hot-water heating system with a boiler feeding radiators in the ground-floor living room and two upstairs bedrooms, and a flush lavatory. The plumbing was designed by Suga Shōkai of Osaka. The plan is the naka-rōka type, a central corridor with rooms on both sides, and the garden appears to have been laid out by a Hashimoto of the Hashimoto garden works in Osaka.
Why the House Is on the National Register
Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property system, introduced in 1996, is deliberately lighter than designation as an Important Cultural Property. Owners keep the freedom to alter and use their buildings; in exchange the state records them and offers technical advice. Registration number 28-0071 was granted under the criterion covering buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country, and the public notice followed on 20 December 2000, in the twenty-seventh round of registrations.
Two things underpin the case. One is chronology, as set out above. The other is condition: the house has stood on the same plot for a century and is still lived in by the family that built it, so the arrangement of rooms, the joinery and the fittings have not been erased by conversion to a museum or a café. Small design decisions survive at full strength. The stair tower beside the entrance rises through two storeys and is capped with an emphatic gable, breaking out of what is otherwise a hipped roof; Kawashima reads this as a deliberate face for the building. The porch is pierced by arched openings on two sides, and the same arch is repeated over a recessed bench inside it. The foundations are laid in rounded granite fieldstone gathered from the Rokkō range.
One point remains open. The register describes red roof tiles, while the architectural study describes glazed brown pantiles with ridge-end ogre tiles, and raises the possibility that the original covering was salt-glazed. The roof has been worked on more than once in a hundred years, and the specification document has not been located.
Visiting: What Is Realistic
This is a private home, not an attraction. Descendants of Maeda Keiji live in the house, and there is no ticket office, no fixed opening time and no admission charge, because there is nothing to admit visitors to on an ordinary day. Turning up unannounced is not appropriate.
What the household does instead is open the building occasionally. The residents run it as a community space under the name Sanda no Uchi, hosting small workshops, and the house has been opened for guided tours during Sanda Machihaku, a town-wide heritage festival held in autumn. On one such occasion Kawashima Tomoo himself gave the commentary. Anyone hoping to get inside should watch the festival programme and the household's own site for dates, and should expect places to be limited.
From the street the south elevation and the arched windows are legible over the boundary wall, and the concrete posts supporting that wall are worth a second look: their bases flare outward at the foot, a small piece of shaping that was clearly drawn rather than improvised. Photographing the exterior from the public lane is unproblematic; photographing into the garden or the rooms is not. The house stands about twelve minutes on foot from Sanda Station, served by JR West and by the Shintetsu line from Kobe, and there is no visitor parking. The building is also listed by Hyōgo Prefecture as an Important Landscape Structure and appears in the prefecture's selection of notable modern houses.
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Q&A
- Is Maeda Family Residence Main House open to the public?
- Not on a regular basis. It remains a private residence occupied by the founder's descendants. The household opens it for occasional workshops and for guided tours during the autumn Sanda Machihaku festival, but there are no standing opening hours and no admission desk. Please do not call at the house without an invitation.
- Who designed Maeda Family Residence Main House?
- Research by the architectural historian Kawashima Tomoo, together with drawings held by the family, attributes the design to Nishimura Isaku through his firm Nishimura Kenchiku Jimusho, and dates completion to 1926. The Agency for Cultural Affairs register entry does not name a designer, so the attribution comes from scholarship rather than from the official record.
- How do you get to Maeda Family Residence Main House from Sanda Station?
- Yashikimachi is roughly a twelve-minute walk from Sanda Station, which is served by the JR Fukuchiyama Line and by the Shintetsu Sanda Line running up from Kobe. Sanda is about forty minutes from Osaka by JR. There is no parking for visitors.
- What makes Maeda Family Residence Main House architecturally significant?
- Its date. Spanish-influenced houses became common in the Osaka-Kobe suburbs during the early Shōwa period, but this one was finished in 1926, in a town north of the Rokkō mountains that lay outside the fashionable belt. The register cites it as an early example. Its survival in continuous family occupation, with a hot-water heating system and a flush lavatory installed from the outset, adds to the case.
- Can you photograph Maeda Family Residence Main House?
- The exterior can be photographed from the public lane, where the arched south windows and the corbelled corner are visible above the boundary wall. Photography into the garden or through windows is not acceptable, and drone use over a private residence would not be either. On open days, ask the household about interior photography before shooting.
Basic Information
| Name | Maeda Family Residence Main House (前田家住宅主屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 12-3 Yashikimachi, Sanda City, Hyōgo Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 28-0071 |
| Year Designated | Registered 4 December 2000; public notice 20 December 2000 (27th round) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber, two storeys, tiled roof; building area 108 m² |
| Owner | Private (no owner recorded in the national database) |
| Public Access | Private residence. Opened occasionally for workshops and festival tours; no regular opening hours |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Maeda Family Residence Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00002071
- Cultural Heritage Online — Maeda Family Residence Main House
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/139341
- Kawashima Tomoo, "Nishimura Isaku, Pioneer of Hanshin Modernism, and His Works" (Hyōgo Association of Architectural Firms)
- https://hyogo-aaf.org/media/upload/member/kusunoki/No151/pdf/08-25_theme1.pdf
- Maeda Family Residence Main House — official site of the household
- https://twilightpalace.localinfo.jp/
- Sanda Machihaku — Sanda city heritage festival
- https://sanda-machihaku.jp/
- Sanda City — list of designated cultural properties
- https://www.city.sanda.lg.jp/soshiki/15/gyomu/rekishi_bunkazai/bunkazai/14999.html
Last verified: 2026.08.26