Nagasaki Family Residence

A Merchant House on Hiketa's Old Highway

The Nagasaki Family Residence (長﨑家住宅, Nagasaki-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant family's compound on the old highway through Hiketa, Higashikagawa City, Kagawa Prefecture, where a storehouse of 1909, a main house of 1930 and 4 other structures were each registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 28, 2011.

The name has nothing to do with the city of Nagasaki in Kyushu. Nagasaki is the family's surname here, written with a variant form of the second character; municipal lists often use the everyday form 長崎 instead.

Hiketa sits at the eastern tip of Kagawa, a small port town whose old highway is still lined with soy sauce breweries and merchant houses. The Nagasaki Family Residence stands on the west side of that road, its main house facing east onto the street.

According to the Hiketa town walking map published on Higashikagawa City's tourism site, the family traded in general goods through the Edo period and began brewing soy sauce in 1908. The storehouse at the back of the plot is divided into a former rice store on the east and a former koji store on the west, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles it out as a surviving trace of Hiketa's soy sauce industry.

The same map notes that Nanbara Shigeru, a Hiketa native who went on to serve as president of the University of Tokyo, once convalesced here. Which building he stayed in, and when, could not be confirmed for this article.

How the Six Structures Fit Together

The registration covers the main house, the formal reception wing, the guest lavatory, the storehouse, the front wooden gate and wooden fence, and the earthen wall, numbered consecutively 37-0372 through 37-0377. All six were listed under the same criterion: they contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Only the storehouse dates from the Meiji era; the other 5 were all built in 1930, which means the street-facing part of the Nagasaki Family Residence was rebuilt in a single campaign in the early Showa years.

The layout reads best with the highway as your reference line. The main house faces the road. A tall wooden fence with the front gate set into it runs north of the main house and turns a corner along the east side of the reception wing, which stands northwest of the main house. West of the reception wing, and joined to it by a Kure-en veranda, is the guest lavatory. The storehouse lies further west, behind the lavatory. South of the main house kitchen, an earthen wall runs east and west along a side lane.

What the family showed the street and what it kept for daily life were built differently. The front fence has a Shitami-itabari clapboard base, Shikkui lime plaster above in the Shinkabe manner with the timber frame left visible, and bamboo lattice in its openings. The lane-side wall, by contrast, is finished in mortar, and the Agency's description of the Nagasaki Family Residence points out that the specification changes with location. The sequence of gate, reception wing and lavatory forms the route along which guests were received.

Visiting the Nagasaki Family Residence

This is a private home, and the Agency's database gives no owner's name. No regular public opening of the interior could be confirmed during research for this article, so a visit means looking at the exterior from the street without stepping onto the property.

From the old highway you can see the facade of the main house and the front gate with its fence. The earthen wall is visible from the lane to the south. The reception wing, the guest lavatory and the storehouse sit behind fences and the main house, out of full view from public roads. Keep photography to the exterior as seen from the street, and be considerate of the people who live here.

The nearest station is Hiketa on the JR Kōtoku Line; the house is roughly 300 metres east of it in a straight line, an easy walk. The Hiketa branch office of Higashikagawa City Hall is close by. Drivers can use the Hiketa Interchange on the Takamatsu Expressway.

Higashikagawa City's tourism site publishes the Hiketa town walking map, which marks the Nagasaki family's house, and guided walks through the old streets of Hiketa can be booked in advance.