Tomii Family Residence

The Tomii Family Residence

The Tomii Family Residence (富井家住宅, Tomii-ke Jūtaku) in Kachu, Tadotsu-cho, Kagawa Prefecture, is a samurai house of the Tadotsu domain whose four buildings, the Main House of 1828 and a reception room, storehouse and gate from the late Edo period, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 18, 2006 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Tadotsu Town describes the Tomii Family Residence as the samurai house that survives in Kachu from the domain's Jinya, or administrative compound, built from 1828 onward and showing how a warrior family lived and how its house looked from the street. The Agency notes that the Main House has seen no major alteration. The house is still a private home.

The Jinya and the Kachu District

According to the town, in 1825, under the fourth lord Kyogoku Takakata, the Tadotsu domain laid out a drill ground, riding ground, archery range, residences, a drum tower, the domain school Jimeikan, moats and gates around present-day Kachu and began governing from there. The word kachu itself means a lord's household of retainers. The Main House went up only three years after the jinya opened.

After the domains were abolished in the Meiji era, the compound was pulled down piece by piece, and the lord's palace grounds now lie under the JR Tadotsu railway works. The town's board of education lists what survives: a domain rice store, part of a moat wall, one samurai house in Kachu and the foundations of a senior retainer's gate. The Kachu area is also a town-designated historic site.

A town English-language tourist booklet says that Tomii Yasuzo held important posts in the domain for many years. No primary record of the family's rank or offices was found for this article.

How the Compound Is Laid Out

The Agency's descriptions place the four buildings. The Main House stands in the middle of the plot facing south. The Gate sits in front of its entrance, set back slightly from the street. The New Reception Room, southwest of the Main House and joined to it by a covered corridor, comes right up to the road. The Storehouse stands behind the Main House, also facing south.

Samurai houses were usually closed off by a gate and walls. Here the reception room steps out to the street with no enclosure at all, an arrangement the Agency calls distinctive, and together with the Gate it forms the public face of the house. All four buildings have gabled roofs of hongawara tile.

• Main House: 1828, single-storey timber, building area 113 square metres, registration 37-0309
• New Reception Room: late Edo period, single-storey timber, building area 30 square metres, registration 37-0310
• Storehouse: late Edo period, two-storey Dozo-zukuri earthen storehouse, building area 16 square metres, registration 37-0311
• Gate: late Edo period, Udekimon bracket-arm gate, 2.4 metres wide, registration 37-0312

All four were registered in the 52nd round, announced on November 9, 2006, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency dates the late Edo period here to between 1830 and 1867. Each building has its own page.

Visiting and Access

The Tomii Family Residence is a private home, listed by Tadotsu Town as privately owned. As of October 2026 there is no official information on interior visits. Please view the buildings from the street, without entering the property.

The house lies roughly 500 metres northwest of JR Tadotsu Station on the Yosan and Dosan lines (a straight-line estimate from the address coordinates), about a ten-minute walk. The Tadotsu Town Museum, which holds a model of the domain jinya, is about 170 metres west-southwest in the same Kachu district.