A Dried-Goods Merchant on Takajōmachi Street
The Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence (星野家住宅店舗及び主屋, Hoshino-ke Jūtaku Tenpo oyobi Shuoku) is a merchant property at 288 Makabe, Makabe-machi, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture, dating from the middle Meiji era with alterations in the early Shōwa period, and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 21 August 2002.
The property faces south onto Takajōmachi Street, one of four east-west roads that structure the centre of Makabe. Two connected volumes make up the registered building. A two-storey shop with a gabled pantile roof meets the street, and behind it a single-storey dwelling extends back into the plot.
The Hoshino family trades under the house name Morokawaya, taken from Morokawa, the district in what is now Koga City from which they moved to Makabe in the late Edo period. They dealt in dried foodstuffs and supplied the Kasama domain, which administered Makabe from a magistrate's office rather than a castle. The present head of the family is the sixth generation.
Two Buildings, Two Dates
The national register records the age as middle Meiji with early Shōwa alteration, a phrasing that compresses a more interesting story documented by the Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education.
A household survey from 1902 records a floor plan that corresponds closely to the layout still in use, which places the dwelling in the middle Meiji years. The shop is a different matter. Family tradition holds that the front was rebuilt after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, and a comparison with a photograph believed to predate the earthquake shows the eaves height of the lower canopy sitting differently. The reading favoured by the survey is that the damaged shop was repaired to almost the same plan in the years after 1923, making the dwelling middle Meiji and the shopfront early Shōwa.
The registration criterion cited is contribution to the historic landscape of the nation, which is the appropriate one here. This building matters less as a singular monument than as a functioning piece of a street.
Dimensions are modest. The shop measures four ken across the front by three and a half deep, with roughly four shaku of that depth given over to the canopy. The dwelling behind runs four and a half ken by three, with a kitchen wing projecting a further bay. Total building area is 109 square metres, registered as a single structure under number 08-0071.
The Shopfront and What It Reveals
Look first at the upper storey. It is finished in shinkabe, the technique that leaves the structural posts exposed against white plaster infill, and the gable ends carry boarding along the lower portion. Eaves are supported by plain rafters with no plastered soffit, and the timber is simply left visible.
That last detail carries information. Makabe's wealthier merchants built misegura, storehouse-style shops sheathed entirely in thick plaster to resist fire, a response to the great fire of 1837. The Hoshino shop makes almost no such concession. The timber is out in the open where flames could reach it, which tells you something about the scale of the business and the priorities behind it.
The ground floor is open across nearly its full width, with a glass display case set into the western end, about four shaku across. That display window is the feature the registration description singles out, and it is the reason the front reads as an early Shōwa shop rather than a Meiji one. Aluminium sash has since replaced the original glazing.
Inside, the survey notes traces of the chōba, the raised accounting alcove where the shopkeeper sat, surviving on the western side toward the dwelling. The interior would once have been a broad earthen-floored work space.
The rear dwelling is built in a manner recalling shoin reception rooms, with an eight-mat sitting room and an eight-mat guest room.
Visiting Makabe
The Hoshino House operates as a gallery, so the interior can sometimes be entered, though opening is irregular and depends on the family. Visitors who arrive on an ordinary weekday may find it closed. The exterior is visible from the street at any hour and costs nothing to see.
The reliable window is the Makabe Hina Doll Festival, held annually from 4 February to 3 March. During the festival more than a hundred households and shops along the streets display doll sets, and the Hoshino family shows a set roughly a century old. Note that many Makabe shops close on Wednesdays, so weekends are the safer choice.
Makabe was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings on 29 June 2010, the eighty-seventh such district in Japan and the first in Ibaraki Prefecture. Around a hundred registered buildings stand within and around the preservation area. The town suffered the heaviest damage of any preservation district in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, with more than ninety percent of its traditional buildings affected, and repair work has continued for years since.
There is no railway station in Makabe. From Tsukuba Station on the Tsukuba Express, take a bus toward Tsukubasan-guchi and change to a Sakuragawa city bus, roughly seventy minutes in total. By car, the Sakuragawa-Chikusei interchange on the Kita-Kantō Expressway is about twenty minutes away. The Takajōmachi car park at 279-1 Makabe holds sixty-five cars and sits within a minute's walk of the Hoshino House.
Photography of exteriors from the street is unrestricted. Inside the gallery, ask before photographing.
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Q&A
- Can visitors enter the Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence?
- The building is a private home run partly as a gallery, and entry depends on when the family opens it. There is no fixed schedule and no admission counter. The surest opportunity is the Makabe Hina Doll Festival between 4 February and 3 March, when the house takes part in the town-wide display. The exterior can be viewed from the street at any time without charge.
- How old is the Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence?
- The national register gives middle Meiji with early Shōwa alteration. Prefectural research reads this as a dwelling built in the middle Meiji years, supported by a household survey of 1902 whose floor plan matches the present one, and a shopfront rebuilt to nearly the same plan after damage in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.
- What should I look at on the Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence?
- The glass display case set into the western end of the shopfront, which the registration description picks out as characteristic of an early Shōwa shop. Above it, the second storey shows exposed structural posts against white plaster, with rafters left bare at the eaves and no fireproof plaster casing, unlike the storehouse-style shops elsewhere in the town.
- How do I reach the Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence without a car?
- Makabe has no railway station. From Tsukuba Station on the Tsukuba Express, take a bus toward Tsukubasan-guchi and change there to a Sakuragawa city bus, about seventy minutes in all. Services are infrequent, so check timetables before setting out. Extra buses run from Tsukuba on the busiest festival weekends.
- What was the family behind the Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence?
- They trade as Morokawaya, a name taken from the Morokawa district in present-day Koga City, from which they moved to Makabe in the late Edo period. Records indicate they dealt in dried foodstuffs as purveyors to the Kasama domain, which governed Makabe through a magistrate's office. The house has passed through six generations.
Basic Information
| Name | Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence (星野家住宅店舗及び主屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 288 Makabe, Makabe-machi, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 08-0071 |
| Year Designated | Registered 21 August 2002; public notice 3 September 2002 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Timber frame, two storeys and single storey, tiled roof; building area 109 m² |
| Owner | Privately held; owner not listed in the national database |
| Public Access | Exterior viewable from the street at any time, free of charge; interior opened irregularly as a gallery, most reliably during the Makabe Hina Doll Festival (4 February to 3 March) |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00002877
- Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education: Hoshino House Shop and Main Residence
- https://kyoiku.pref.ibaraki.jp/bunkazai/bunkazai-registered-6609/
- National Council of Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings: Sakuragawa Makabe
- https://www.denken.gr.jp/archive/sakuragawa-makabe/index.html
- Sakuragawa City: Makabe Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/education/bunkazai/city_bunkazai/kuni_bunkazai/page003423.html
Last verified: 2026.08.06