A reception wing behind the shop
The Sekine Family Residence Main House is a single-story timber building at 390 Makabe in Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture, built in 1875 behind the family's shop and entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2002.
It is attached to the rear wall of the shop and pushes out to one side as a projecting wing, so that the two buildings together read as an L in plan. The roof is Sangawara-buki, the pantiling that covers most of the older buildings in this town, and the whole of the Sekine Family Residence Main House sits on one floor.
Inside, the plan is short and formal rather than domestic: two rooms of 6 Tatami mats and one of 8, plus the spaces that serve them. The building area comes to 63 square meters, which makes it larger in footprint than the two-story shop in front of it.
The rooms open outward. The Agency for Cultural Affairs description singles out the treatment of the Engawa, the boarded veranda that runs along the outside of the rooms, calling it open in handling. Where a veranda is shut in by fixed walls the rooms behind it become interior; where it is left open, as here, the garden side of the building becomes part of the room.
Why a guest room is called the main house
The name on the register is a puzzle worth sitting with. In an ordinary merchant property the shuoku, the main house, is where the family lived. The Agency for Cultural Affairs reads the Sekine Family Residence Main House differently. Its entry notes that a separate dwelling building once stood on the plot, and concludes that this range was most likely the original guest reception rooms, the kyaku-Zashiki, connected directly to the shop.
That reading changes what the building is. A merchant's shop needed somewhere to take a customer who was not going to be dealt with across the chōba counter: a supplier, a lender, an official from the jinya. The rooms behind the shop did that work. When the separate dwelling later went, this range absorbed the role of the main house and kept the name.
The register records buildings as they now stand, which is why the label and the history sit at an angle to each other. It is the kind of detail that a walk past the front of the property will not give you.
The Sekine Family Residence Main House was registered on June 25, 2002, and gazetted on July 16 of the same year, as one structure under registration number 08-0061, in the 33rd round of registrations. The criterion applied was that the building is a model of its type of design. Registration is not designation: it is the lighter system, made for buildings that are still lived in and privately owned.
The joinery of a Meiji parlour
What the register singles out in the Sekine Family Residence Main House is the quality of the finish work. The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to the carefully made toko alcove and the Tsukeshoin, the built-in writing bay that the Shoin-zukuri tradition set beside it, and reads in them the modern Japanese style, the kindai wafū that carpenters were developing in the Meiji years by working formal older room types with new precision.
The date helps explain the expense. The Meiji decades were good ones for Makabe. Capital gathered behind institutions such as the Makabe Bank, silk reeling grew, and the cloth merchants along the Gojinyamae-dōri, the street fronting the old Jinya, rebuilt in a wave of shop and storehouse construction. Restrictions carried over from domain rule had lapsed, and merchant families raised Yakuimon gates in front of properties that would not have been allowed them a generation earlier. The Sekine Family Residence Main House went up in 1875, early in that stretch, and its cut and fitted toko is the kind of expense a family makes when it expects the next decade to be better than the last.
Room sizes carry meaning too. A pair of 6-mat rooms and an 8-mat room is a reception suite, not a household: enough to seat guests in a graded order, with the 8-mat room taking the toko and the seat of honour in front of it. There is no large kitchen doma and no working floor, because those functions belonged to the shop in front and to the dwelling that has gone.
Visiting the Sekine Family Residence Main House
Set expectations first. The Sekine Family Residence Main House stands behind the shop, is a private building, and is not open to the public. Sakuragawa City's map of the registered properties asks visitors to view these buildings from outside and to stay off the sites. From the road you will mostly see the shop; the low pantiled roof of the main house shows over and behind it, and the projecting wing catches the light from one side. There is no entrance, no charge, and no reception.
The exception in the calendar is the Makabe Hina Matsuri, held every year from February 4 to March 3, when over 100 households and shops in the town put out hina doll displays and viewing is free. Participation is decided house by house and changes from year to year, so use the festival map given out free in the town during the period instead of planning around any single property.
Photography of the Sekine Family Residence Main House from the public road is unrestricted, though the angles are limited by the shop in front. Do not photograph into the site or the rooms, and do not photograph residents.
There is no railway station in Makabe. Come by JR Mito Line to Iwase Station and take the Sakuragawa city bus, Yamazakura GO, about 20 minutes to the Kamijuku or Shimojuku stop. From Tokyo, the Tsukuba Express runs to Tsukuba Station, the Tsukuba North Shuttle continues to Tsukubasanguchi in about 50 minutes, and the city bus covers the last 20 minutes. By car, Prefectural Route 41 brings you in from the Tsuchiura-kita interchange on the Joban Expressway or from the Sakuragawa-Chikusei interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway, with paid parking at the Takajōmachi car park.
One thing to bear in mind while walking: this district took the heaviest damage of any preservation district in the country in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, with more than 90 percent of its traditional buildings affected, and repair work has run on for years. The area was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 2010, the year before. Scaffolding and half-finished walls are part of what a visit here looks like.
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Q&A
- Can you visit the inside of the Sekine Family Residence Main House?
- No. The Sekine Family Residence Main House is privately owned and the interior is closed to the public. Sakuragawa City asks that the registered buildings be viewed from the public road and that visitors not enter the sites. There is no ticket office and no admission fee.
- Why is the Sekine Family Residence Main House called a main house if it was a guest room?
- The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that a separate dwelling building once stood on the plot, and reads this range as most likely the original guest reception rooms attached to the shop. After the separate dwelling was lost, this building took on the role and the name of the main house. The register describes buildings as they stand today, so the label reflects present use rather than original function.
- What can you actually see of the Sekine Family Residence Main House from the street?
- Not a great deal. The building sits behind the shop, so what shows from the road is the low pantiled roof rising behind the shop's ridge and the flank of the projecting wing. The interior features that the register singles out, the toko alcove, the tsukeshoin and the open veranda, are not visible from outside.
- When was the Sekine Family Residence Main House registered, and under what number?
- It was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 25, 2002, gazetted on July 16 of that year, with registration number 08-0061, in the 33rd round of registrations. The building itself dates from 1875. This is a registration rather than a designation; the two are separate systems, and the register is the lighter of them.
- How do you reach the Sekine Family Residence Main House?
- Take the JR Mito Line to Iwase Station and the Sakuragawa city bus, Yamazakura GO, for about 20 minutes to Kamijuku or Shimojuku. From Tokyo, the Tsukuba Express to Tsukuba Station connects with the Tsukuba North Shuttle to Tsukubasanguchi in about 50 minutes and then the city bus for a further 20 minutes. Makabe has no station of its own. During the Hina Matsuri traffic restrictions the nearby stops close and the Sakuragawa City Hall Makabe Office stop is used instead.
Basic Information
| Name | Sekine Family Residence Main House (関根家住宅主屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 390 Makabe, Makabe-cho, Sakuragawa City, Ibaraki Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (building) |
| Year Designated | Registered June 25, 2002; gazetted July 16, 2002 |
| Quantity | 1 structure |
| Dimensions | Timber, single story, tiled roof; building area 63 square meters |
| Owner | Private; no owner name recorded in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database |
| Public Access | Not open; partial exterior view from the public road only |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database — Sekine Family Residence Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00002747
- Sakuragawa City — Makabe Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/education/bunkazai/city_bunkazai/kuni_bunkazai/page003423.html
- Sakuragawa City — Registered Cultural Properties Map, "Walking Makabe" (PDF)
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/data/doc/1487569963_doc_23_1.pdf
- Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education — Makabe Preservation District, Sakuragawa City
- https://kyoiku.pref.ibaraki.jp/bunkazai/bunkazai-8557/
- Sakuragawa City — The Makabe Townscape
- https://www.city.sakuragawa.lg.jp/tourism_guide/learn/page000455.html
Last verified: 2026.09.07