Shimanaka Family Residence

A Meiji Homestead by the Muko River

The Shimanaka Family Residence (島中家住宅, Shimanaka-ke Jūtaku) is a Meiji-era homestead in Oshokita 2-chome, Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, where six structures centred on a main house built in 1886 (Meiji 19) were listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

The property sits among ordinary houses on the east bank of the Muko River, close to the western edge of Amagasaki. Five buildings are listed, a main house, a storehouse, a middle storehouse, an east storehouse and a barn, together with the partition wall that encloses the front garden. All of them went up during the Meiji era, so a complete set of buildings from a substantial nineteenth-century household survives in what is now a built-up part of the city.

The Shimanaka Family Residence is easiest to understand in two halves. At the front, a main house 20 metres long faces a garden screened by its partition wall. At the back, three earthen storehouses of falling size stand in a row along the northern edge of the plot, with a tiny barn tucked against the last of them. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out that rear line as the defining view of the north side of the property.

When the Buildings Went Up

Sorted by the dates given in the national database, the six structures fall into three groups.

• Storehouse, middle storehouse and east storehouse: early Meiji, 1868 to 1882
• Main house and partition wall: 1886 (Meiji 19)
• Barn: mid-Meiji, 1883 to 1897

On those dates, the three storehouses are older than the house. Yet the largest of them is joined to the north wall of the main house and is entered from its innermost room. One possibility is that an earlier dwelling stood here and the storehouses belonged to it, but no public source says anything about a rebuilding. The main house and the partition wall share the date 1886, which suggests the house and its front garden were laid out as a single project.

How the Homestead Is Arranged

The Agency's notes on each structure say where it stands. Put together, they describe the property from front to back.

The front: main house and garden wall

The main house is a large single-storey building facing south. Its best room sits in the south-west corner, looking onto a front garden, and a formal shikidai entrance opens on that side. The partition wall closes off this garden on its south and west. Each face of the wall is finished differently, so the garden looks one way from inside and another from the lane.

Behind the house: the storehouse

The storehouse is attached directly to the north side of the main house and opened from the innermost room, a storehouse inside the household rather than out in the yard. The Agency's note on the middle storehouse calls it the uchigura, the inner storehouse. It is the biggest of the three and the only one with two storeys.

The north edge: middle storehouse, east storehouse and barn

East of the inner storehouse stands the middle storehouse, and east of that the east storehouse, both single-storey. Their footprints shrink as you move east: 23 square metres for the inner storehouse, 15 square metres for the middle one, 12 square metres for the east one. Beyond them a barn of just 5.9 square metres leans against the east storehouse. Four buildings in descending order of size make up the rear view of the Shimanaka Family Residence.

What Is Registered

The six structures were registered on 2021/6/24 in the 99th round of national registrations, under consecutive numbers 28-0753 to 28-0758. All six qualify for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• Main house (28-0753): timber, single storey, tiled roof, building area 222 square metres
• Storehouse (28-0754): dozo-zukuri earthen-walled construction, two storeys, tiled roof, building area 23 square metres
• Middle storehouse (28-0755): dozo-zukuri, single storey, tiled roof, building area 15 square metres
• East storehouse (28-0756): dozo-zukuri, single storey, tiled roof, building area 12 square metres
• Barn (28-0757): timber, single storey, tiled roof, building area 5.9 square metres
• Partition wall (28-0758): timber, tiled coping, 11 metres long

In the Agency's classification the partition wall is not a building but an "other structure". None of the six was listed for its looks alone; each was recognised as part of the overall view of the homestead.

Visiting and Getting There

The Shimanaka Family Residence is a private home. As of October 2026 we found no announcement of public openings or guided visits, and the grounds and interiors are closed. If you pass by, please stay off the property and respect the residents' privacy. Photographs of every structure are published in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database.

Amagasaki Municipal History Museum (06-6489-9801) handles the city's announcements on registered cultural properties.

The nearest stations are Amagasaki Center Pool-mae and Mukogawa on the Hanshin Main Line, each roughly 1.7 to 1.8 kilometres south of the house in a straight line. Across the river in Nishinomiya, Koshienguchi Station on the JR Kobe Line lies about 1.7 kilometres to the west-north-west. These distances are estimates taken from map positions; there is no official access guide.

About the Name

Shimanaka-ke Jūtaku means "the Shimanaka family residence", and the district name Oshokita is read Ōshō-kita. The national database lists each structure under the residence name followed by the building: omoya (main house), kura (storehouse), nakagura (middle storehouse), higashigura (east storehouse), naya (barn) and shikiribei (partition wall).