The House Behind the Udon Counter
Walk seventy meters up the approach road to Yakuriji, the eighty-fifth temple of the Shikoku pilgrimage, and a broad tiled roof rises at the center of a walled compound. This is the shuoku, the main dwelling of the Yamada family, and on most days a line of visitors waits outside its doors. They have not come to see a Registered Tangible Cultural Property. They have come for Sanuki udon. The building serves both purposes at once.
The Yamada were a family of standing in this part of Kagawa. In the Edo period they held the post of ōjōya, the senior village headman responsible for a cluster of communities, and in the Meiji era they turned to brewing sake under the label Genji Masamune. The house you enter today dates from the late Taishō period, built between roughly 1912 and 1925 as the residential wing of that brewing enterprise.
It is a large timber building, fourteen bays long across the front, roofed in formal hongawara tiles under an irimoya hip-and-gable form. The upper level is a tsushi half-story, low and shallow, pierced by mushiko-mado: plaster-covered lattice windows shaped like the slats of an insect cage, a feature that marks the merchant and landed houses of western Japan.
Why It Carries the Registration
The house was entered on the national register on 12 October 2001, in the thirtieth round of registrations, together with several other structures on the same grounds. The criterion applied was contribution to the historic character of the national landscape rather than the stricter categories reserved for older or rarer monuments.
That criterion fits the case well. The value here is not a single spectacular detail but the survival of an entire working estate: the residence, the brewery storehouses, the brick chimney, the long gatehouse, and the smaller structures around the garden, all standing in their original relationship to one another. The main house anchors that group. Its scale and its position at the compound's center make legible, at a glance, the rank of the family that built it.
The register lists the building as a work of industrial history, a reflection of its role in the sake trade. Its architecture, though, belongs squarely to the tradition of the substantial rural house, and reading it means reading both stories at once.
Looking Closely on a Visit
Because the house now operates as the Udon Honjin Yamada-ya restaurant, the interior is genuinely open, not roped off. You sit where the family once received guests. The dining rooms extend into the former storehouses behind, so a single meal can carry you through several of the registered buildings.
Two things reward attention. First, the noren curtains and the shop's logo were designed by Wada Kunibō (1899–1992), an artist and satirist from Kagawa related to the Yamada family; his graphic hand gives the old house a distinct modern signature. Second, from the main rooms you can look out onto the garden enclosed by the surrounding buildings, best seen when you are not rushing between courses.
The restaurant is busy: on peak days several thousand people pass through. Arriving outside the midday rush gives you the quieter house, and a better chance to notice the mushiko-mado throwing their shadows across the upper wall.
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the main house?
- Yes. It operates as the Udon Honjin Yamada-ya restaurant, so entering and dining inside is the ordinary way to visit. There is no separate admission for the building itself.
- How old is the building?
- It dates from the late Taishō period, built between about 1912 and 1925 as the residence of the Yamada family's sake-brewing business.
- What does mushiko-mado mean?
- It is a lattice window whose bars are coated in plaster, resembling the slats of an insect cage. Such windows are typical of the upper story of well-to-do houses in western Japan.
- How do I get there?
- The site is on the approach to Yakuriji in Mure, Takamatsu. The nearest station is Yakuri on the Kotoden Shido line, about a twenty-minute walk; local buses from Takamatsu also serve the area.
- Are the other buildings on the grounds also registered?
- Yes. The main house is one of eight registered structures on the estate, which include two sake storehouses, a brick chimney, a stone lantern, the long gatehouse, a garden gate, and a small Jizō hall.
Basic Information
| Name | Yamada Family (former Genji Masamune Sake Brewery) Main House |
|---|---|
| Location | 3186 Mure, Mure-cho, Takamatsu, Kagawa |
| Category | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) |
| Registered | 12 October 2001 (Reg. No. 37-0075) |
| Period | Late Taishō period (c. 1912–1925) |
| Structure | Timber, two storeys, tiled roof; building area 284 m²; 1 building |
| Current use | Udon Honjin Yamada-ya restaurant (open to the public) |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database — Yamada Family Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00002459
- Cultural Heritage Online — Yamada Family (former Genji Masamune Sake Brewery) Main House
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/193459
- Udon Honjin Yamada-ya — official site
- https://www.yamada-ya.com/
- Kagawa Prefecture Tourism Association — Udon Honjin Yamada-ya
- https://www.my-kagawa.jp/udon/521/
Last verified: 2026.07.05