Morimatsu Family Residence

About the Morimatsu Family Residence

The Morimatsu Family Residence (森松家住宅, Morimatsu-ke Jūtaku) is the estate of a former village headman of Nishi-Tomatsu village in Mukonoso Higashi, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, whose 12 structures, built between the late Edo and early Shōwa periods, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2009.

According to Amagasaki City, the Morimatsu family served as shōya, the hereditary headman of Nishi-Tomatsu, through the late Edo period and into the first years of Meiji. The house stood near the middle of the old village. Today the neighbourhood around Mukonoso Station on the Hankyu Kobe Line is almost entirely suburban housing, which makes the survival of a full farmhouse compound, walled in by storehouses, barns and gates, all the more striking.

Amagasaki City had already listed the Morimatsu Family Residence as one of its "urban beauty" buildings, a local designation for structures that shape the character of a street, before national registration followed.

Twelve Registered Structures

All 12 parts of the Morimatsu Family Residence were registered on 7 August 2009 as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, under numbers 28-0401 to 28-0412, each for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives these dates and sizes:

• Main House: late Edo period. Wooden, one storey with a low loft, 263 m²
• Nagayamon Gate: late Edo period. Wooden, one storey, 95 m²
• South Barn: late Edo period. Wooden, one storey, 84 m²
• Clothing Storehouse: late Edo period. Two-storey dozō storehouse, 19 m²
• Outer Wall: late Edo and late Meiji periods. Wooden, 58 m in total length
• Well: late Edo period. Stone, 0.64 m², with a washing slab
• Tool Storehouse: early Meiji era. Two-storey dozō storehouse, 15 m²
• Rice Storehouse: around 1905. One-storey dozō storehouse, 63 m²
• East Barn: late Taishō era. Wooden, one storey, 132 m²
• East Gate: 1922. Wooden, one storey, 18 m²
• Annex: early Shōwa era. Wooden, one storey, 31 m²
• Middle Gate: early Shōwa era. Wooden, 1.3 m wide

Amagasaki City says the main house was moved to the site and re-erected at the end of the Edo period. The city does not say where it came from.

The two official sources disagree on how to describe the clothing storehouse: the national database calls it a two-storey dozō (clay-walled) storehouse, while the city list calls it a two-storey timber building. Its own page looks at this more closely.

How the Morimatsu Family Residence Is Laid Out

The buildings of the Morimatsu Family Residence line the edges of a large plot. Along the west side, the formal front, the Nagayamon Gate comes first and the main house follows to the north. Behind the main house, joined to it by a Kuramae porch, is the clothing storehouse, with the tool storehouse beside it and the rice storehouse at the north-east corner. The east side has the East Gate flanked by the East Barn, and the south side has the South Barn, itself built as a gatehouse.

Stretches of outer wall fill the gaps between the tool and rice storehouses and on either side of the South Barn, so that storehouses, barns, gates and walls together enclose the compound almost without a break.

Inside, the well sits near the centre, the annex faces the garden east of the main house, and the small Middle Gate separates the two.

The oldest pieces date to the late Edo period, the rice storehouse and tool storehouse to Meiji, the East Gate and East Barn to Taishō, and the annex and Middle Gate to early Shōwa. Reading the Morimatsu Family Residence as a house added to over more than a century is the easiest way into it. Each building has its own page.

Visiting the Morimatsu Family Residence

The Morimatsu Family Residence is a private home, and Amagasaki City states plainly that it is not open to the public. You cannot enter the grounds; what you can see is the exterior from the surrounding streets. No special openings had been announced as of September 2026.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out the north-west corner by the clothing storehouse, the east side with the rice storehouse and East Barn, and the west front with the Nagayamon Gate as the parts that give the estate its street presence. Walking the perimeter is the way to see it. Keep photography to the public road, and please do not linger at the gates or peer into the grounds.

The nearest station is Mukonoso on the Hankyu Kobe Line. The Morimatsu Family Residence lies in a residential district roughly 400 metres north of the station in a straight line (an estimate from the map position). There is no visitor parking.