Masui Family Residence Main Building

A Castle-Town Townhouse Behind a Black Plaster Wall

The Masui Family Residence Main House (増井家住宅主屋, Masuike-jūtaku Shuoku) is a merchant townhouse in Ōgimachi, Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, built in 1907 (Meiji 40) and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 2009.

Its frontage measures 7.0 metres. That figure is worth holding onto, because it explains almost everything about the building. Land in a castle town was taxed and allocated by street width, so merchant families bought narrow lots and pushed their households backwards, room behind room, deep into the block. The Masui house follows that logic exactly: a compact face on the street to the north, and a long body running south, where the register records a total building area of 131 square metres.

The upper part of the street elevation is finished in kuro-shikkui, black lime plaster, and pierced by a mushiko-mado: a small window whose vertical bars are wrapped in the same plaster, so that the opening reads as a row of thick, rounded ribs rather than a frame with a grille inside it. The name translates roughly as "insect cage window." Below it, at ground level, a projecting latticed bay window (degōshi) leans out over the pavement under a low secondary eave (geya-bisashi). The roof above is a simple gable clad in hongawara, the pairing of broad flat pan tiles with semi-cylindrical cover tiles that was reserved for the more substantial houses.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the structure as single-storey timber construction, while its own descriptive note for the building calls it tsushi-nikai: a low half-storey tucked under the roof, too shallow to stand up in comfortably, used for storage and for keeping silkworms or goods dry. Both statements are defensible depending on whether that attic level is counted as a floor, and the discrepancy in the record is itself a small illustration of how awkwardly the townhouse type fits modern building categories.

Registered, Not Designated: Why the Distinction Matters

Japan protects cultural property through two parallel systems, and the Masui house belongs to the lighter of the two. Designation (shitei) as an Important Cultural Property or National Treasure is a strong, restrictive instrument applied to a small number of buildings; owners gain substantial subsidies and lose most of their freedom to alter the fabric. Registration (tōroku), introduced by an amendment to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties in 1996, was designed for a different problem: the rapid loss of ordinary buildings from the Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa decades that no one was going to nominate for National Treasure status, but whose disappearance would empty out Japan's streets.

Under registration, the owner keeps the building in use and needs only to notify the authorities before making significant changes to the exterior. Modest tax relief and repair support follow. The trade-off is deliberate: less protection, but a system that a private family living in an inherited house can actually live with.

The Masui Main House was registered on 28 April 2009, with public notification on 14 May of the same year, in the 63rd round of registrations. Its register number is 37-0323. The criterion cited is that the building "serves as a model of design" (造形の規範となっているもの), the category applied to buildings whose form and detailing represent a type well. Two neighbouring buildings in the same compound were registered on the same day: the Shoin (書院, register number 37-0324) and the Tea House (茶室, 37-0325).

Look closely at those three entries and something unexpected appears. The Shoin, immediately to the east, dates from the closing years of the Edo period, somewhere between 1830 and 1867. It is older than the main house by four decades at least. Whatever stood at the front of this lot before 1907 came down, and the new main house was built up against a reception wing that had already been there for two generations.

Reading the Front from the Street

Because the interior is a private home and closed to visitors, everything worth seeing here has to be seen from the public road, which is exactly how a townhouse front was always meant to be read. Stand back far enough to take in the whole elevation and the sequence becomes legible from the pavement up.

The lattice of the degōshi comes first. Its bars are set close, and from the street the interior reads as darkness; from inside, the same bars frame a clear view of anyone approaching. That asymmetry was the point. A shopkeeper wanted to see the road without the road seeing in.

Above the lattice, the black plaster. Lime plaster is normally white, and blackening it required lampblack or ink mixed into the finish coat, then burnishing. It cost more. It also read as fire-resistant and prosperous, and in the raking afternoon light it holds a faint sheen that white plaster does not.

Then the mushiko-mado, and the gable above, and the join between the main roof and the lower secondary eave. That step in the roofline is where the building negotiates with the street: the low eave shelters the frontage and the pavement, the high roof covers the household.

What cannot be seen from the road is the plan behind the facade. The register describes an earth-floored passage (tōri-doma) running the full depth of the house along its eastern side, with the raised timber-floored living rooms to the west. In 1948 the family added rooms at the rear, including an oku-zashiki or inner reception room, and in 1956 the house was renovated again. Those two dates matter: this is not a preserved specimen but a house that has been extended and repaired because people kept living in it.

Practical Notes for Visitors

The Masui Family Residence Main House is a private dwelling and is not open to the public. There are no visiting hours, no admission fee, and no interior tours. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record lists no managing body and no public access arrangement, and no scheme of periodic openings has been announced.

The street elevation can be seen from the public road at 1-58-2 Ōgimachi. Please view it from the pavement, keep your voice down, and do not enter the property or attempt to look into the garden or the wings behind. Photography of the exterior from public ground is generally unproblematic, but avoid photographing into the house or towards residents.

Getting there is straightforward. JR Shōwachō Station on the Yosan Line is roughly a ten-minute walk to the southwest, and JR Takamatsu Station lies about 1.3 kilometres to the northeast, a walk of some twenty minutes. Ōgimachi is a working residential and commercial district rather than a preserved historic quarter, so the house appears without warning among later buildings.

If you want to go inside a building of this culture rather than look at one from outside, Takamatsu offers two good options within a few kilometres. Hiunkaku (披雲閣, the former Matsudaira family villa) stands in Tamamo Park on the Takamatsu Castle site, about 1.7 kilometres east; it was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2012 and, while normally used as a rentable hall rather than a museum, it is opened to general viewing during announced periods. Kikugetsutei (掬月亭) in Ritsurin Garden is a large sukiya-style tea pavilion where you can sit on the tatami with a bowl of matcha and a sweet; the pavilion opens 9:00 to 16:30 with last entry at 16:00, the tea charge for adults is 800 yen for matcha or 600 yen for sencha, and garden admission is separate at 500 yen for adults and 170 yen for children. Check current hours and fees before setting out, since both are subject to revision.