Iwase Family Residence Main House

The House at the Centre of the Estate

The Iwase Family Residence Main House (岩瀬家住宅主屋, Iwase-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is the principal dwelling of a salt-producing family in Shinhamacho, Sakaide, Kagawa Prefecture; built around 1890, it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 March 2019 (registration no. 37-432).

It stands near the middle of the plot and faces east. The body of the house is a long, north-south block under a hip-and-gable roof (Irimoya-zukuri) of interlocking pantiles (Sangawara-buki), single-storey except at its south end, where a two-storey section runs east to west. With a building area of 283 square metres, it is the largest of the seven registered structures on the estate.

Around 1932 the house was enlarged and remodelled. The Agency's 2018 recommendation identifies the upper floor at the south end as part of that work, so what you see today is a mid-Meiji house reshaped in the early Shōwa period.

Why It Was Registered

The Iwase Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a large Japanese-style house that records how a wealthy merchant family lived in the modern era.

The plan tells that story. The entrance opens at the centre of the east front; a suite of connected formal rooms (Zashiki) occupies the north end; and the upper floor holds four rooms, some Japanese and some Western in style. Reception and family life are separated within a single house.

Setting a floor that includes Western-style rooms on top of a traditional hip-and-gable house is a small but telling sign of a household adapting to new habits without giving up the old form.

The house is also the anchor of the whole estate. A two-storey reception wing is attached at its northern rear corner, and the Agency treats the two together as the core of the property.

What to Look For

The roofs are the first thing to read. The long hip-and-gable roof runs north to south, while the two-storey section at the south end turns its ridge through 90 degrees. The meeting of low single-storey eaves and the taller upper roof records the later enlargement in the building's own outline.

The central entrance is framed on both sides by wooden fences that run out from its south and north corners. The fences date from the early Shōwa period, close to the time the house was remodelled, though no record linking the two pieces of work has been found.

The connected rooms at the north end lead on into the reception wing behind, giving the Iwase Family Residence Main House the kind of depth, from public entrance to inner guest rooms, that a large merchant household needed.

Seeing the Main House

The house is privately owned and its interior is not open to visitors. Because it stands in the middle of the plot behind the front gate and earthen wall, very little of it can be seen from outside.

Please stay off the property and take any photographs from the public road. Directions and general viewing conditions for the estate are covered on the Iwase Family Residence page.