Uohashi Family Residence

About the Uohashi Family Residence

The Uohashi Family Residence (魚橋家住宅, Uohashi-ke Jūtaku) is a townhouse compound on the old Nozato highway in Itokujimachi, Himeji City, Hyogo Prefecture, where a main house built in 1900 and three later buildings from the late Meiji and Taisho periods were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan in 2014.

The four registered buildings are the street-front main house, a detached room behind it, and two storehouses further back. Directly across the street to the east stand the four registered buildings of the Uohashi Kimono Store, listed on the same day. The two are separate registrations, and this site gives each its own page.

Nozato and the Uohashi Family Residence

Nozato is an old quarter northeast of Himeji Castle. According to the Japan Tourism Agency's multilingual interpretation text, it was a neighborhood of metalworkers that is thought to predate the castle rebuilding ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1581. The northern gate of the inner castle town took its name from the quarter, and the road beyond it, the Tajima Kaido, ran straight through the middle of Nozato.

That road is where the main house of the Uohashi Family Residence stands, facing east. The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a townhouse of real presence in Nozato. On a street where craftsmen and merchants lived just outside the castle town, a two-story Machiya from the end of the Meiji era still keeps its street front much as it was built.

The Four Buildings of the Uohashi Family Residence

All four buildings of the Uohashi Family Residence were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on April 25, 2014, under consecutive numbers 28-0575 to 28-0578. Each was listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives these dates and sizes:

• Main house: 1900. Two-story timber building, tiled roof, building area 137 m²
• Outer storehouse: 1907. Two-story earthen-walled storehouse, tiled roof, building area 92 m²
• Detached room: around 1916. Single-story timber building, tiled roof, building area 71 m²
• Inner storehouse: 1916. Two-story earthen-walled storehouse, tiled roof, building area 28 m²

Read in order, the dates show a tool storehouse going up seven years after the house, then a guest wing and a clothing storehouse about nine years after that. The household took roughly 16 years to assemble its living quarters, its reception rooms and its two stores.

The sources differ on the addresses. The national database places the main house and detached room at 24 Itokujimachi but the inner and outer storehouses at 88 and 81-2 Idei, the neighboring district, so the back of the plot crosses the district line. Himeji City lists all four at 24 Itokujimachi.

How the Uohashi Family Residence Is Laid Out

The Uohashi Family Residence runs deep from the street toward the west, with its buildings lined up one behind another. The main house fronts the road, facing east. Behind it the detached room runs east to west, and behind that, slightly further west, the inner storehouse follows the same alignment. At the far western end of the plot, the outer storehouse runs north to south.

The sequence moves from the public street front to a guest wing and finally to storage, growing more private and more practical with each step back. At 14.5 meters long, the outer storehouse is the longest of the four and closes off the western edge of the property. Each building has its own page with details of its construction.

Visiting the Uohashi Family Residence

The Uohashi Family Residence is a privately owned home. Neither Himeji City nor the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists any open days or visitor arrangements, and the interiors are not open to the public. What you can see is the street front of the main house on the Nozato road; the detached room and both storehouses sit behind it and are largely hidden from the street. Please stay off the property and be considerate of the residents when taking photographs.

The nearest rail station is JR Himeji. The Uohashi Family Residence lies about 2.7 kilometers north-northeast of the station in a straight line, roughly a 40-minute walk past the east side of Himeji Castle. Shinki Bus routes from the station's north exit also run through Nozato; check the stop and journey time on Shinki Bus's route search before setting out.