Aizen Family Residence

What the Aizen Family Residence Is

The Aizen Family Residence (愛染家住宅, Aizen-ke Jūtaku) is a townhouse with its outbuildings of about 1931 in Higashihaze-chō, Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, whose four parts (main house, annex, east storehouse and west storehouse) were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 12 July 2005.

All four share the address 897 Higashihaze-chō and carry consecutive registration numbers, 37-0273 to 37-0276. The national record dates every one of them to about 1931, so the Aizen Family Residence as it stands was put together in a single building campaign in the early Shōwa period.

Three parts, the main house and both storehouses, were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. The annex was registered on a different criterion, as a model of good design. The street-facing buildings and the small garden pavilion are valued for quite different reasons.

A House Facing the Konpira Road

The east side of the Aizen Family Residence fronts an old road that the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls the Konpira Kaidō. The name covers the network of pilgrim routes that led across Sanuki Province to the shrine of Kotohira-gū, and one branch ran south-west out of the Takamatsu castle town.

The main house turns its formal front east toward that road, and the east storehouse is described as part of the same street frontage. Black plaster on the upper floor of the house and white plaster over Namako-kabe tiling on the storehouse sit side by side along the street.

How the Buildings Are Arranged

Reading the four official descriptions together gives a fair picture of the Aizen Family Residence. The main house is U-shaped in plan: a two-storey front range runs north to south along the road, and wings wrap around behind it.

In the middle of the courtyard enclosed by that U stands the annex, a single room of four and a half tatami mats. An arched drum bridge on its south side links it back to the main house.

The two storehouses are grouped south of the main house. The east storehouse lies east to west near the road, and the west storehouse, turned north to south, stands just west of it, so the pair forms something close to an L.

Storehouses Built for Sake

Both storehouses at the Aizen Family Residence were built for work with sake. According to the official descriptions, the east storehouse was originally used to hold sake and the west storehouse for bottling it. The main house itself is classified as a commercial building.

Together these records suggest that in the early 1930s the Aizen family ran a sake business from the same plot where they lived. No public source that we could find gives the shop name, the exact trade, or when it began, so this page goes no further than the recorded uses of the storehouses.

Visiting: Access and Viewing

The Aizen Family Residence is a private home, and we found no information about public opening. The grounds and interiors are closed, so a visit means looking at the exterior from the street. Please keep your voice down and do not linger at the entrance.

The front of the main house and the east storehouse both face the road and can be seen from it. The annex sits inside the courtyard behind the main house and is effectively hidden from outside.

The nearest station is Sanjō on the Kotoden (Takamatsu-Kotohira Electric Railroad) Kotohira Line, the fourth stop from Takamatsu-Chikkō. The Aizen Family Residence is about 900 metres from the station in a straight line, roughly a 15-minute walk. There is no visitor parking.