Moriyama Family Residence Main House

About the Moriyama Family Residence Main House

The Moriyama Family Residence Main House (森山家住宅主屋, Moriyama-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a Japanese-style house built in 1904 in Kajiki-chō, Aira City, Kagoshima Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 3, 2006. It was the home of the Moriyama family, iron founders who prospered in Kajiki; Aira City's own guide reads the word for main house as omoya.

The Moriyama main house is a timber building, single-storey with a partial second floor, under a tiled roof, with a footprint of 218 square meters. It stands in the northwest corner of a long north-south plot, with its ridge running north to south and its front facing east. An entrance porch with an Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof projects from the middle of the front. North of the entrance lie the living rooms, including the Zashiki reception rooms and a detached wing; to the south are the kitchen and an earth-floored Doma.

Why It Was Registered

The Moriyama Family Residence Main House was registered as a model of architectural form. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it is carefully built from good timber throughout, and that the craftsmanship of fittings such as the Ranma transoms shows the design of its time.

This was a working merchant's house as much as a family home. According to Aira City, it was used for business talks and for preparing meals, and it is divided cleanly in two: the eastern half, facing the garden, was for guests, while the western half was the family's private space. The city describes the layout as a sensible plan for a household that did business at home, and says the broad reception rooms facing the garden were modeled on a samurai residence.

The floor plan in the Aira City Board of Education leaflet shows the reception room, guest room and anteroom in a row along the garden side, with the living room, a lower sitting room, a study and the kitchen behind them. A detached wing adjoins the reception room to the north.

What to Look For Inside

Inside the Moriyama main house, look up. Yakushima cedar was used generously for the joinery: the Engawa veranda, the transoms and the Nageshi beams that run along the walls. The pierced-work transoms were not bought ready-made but cut to fit the dimensions of this house.

On the pillars of the anteroom are iron Kugikakushi, decorative caps that hide the heads of nails driven into the pillars. The city's leaflet says they may have been cast in the Moriyama family's own foundry. A family that cast pots and cannon may well have made the small fittings for its own home.

The garden is close to the reception room windows. The guest side of the house was arranged around that view, something that is easier to appreciate sitting inside the rooms than looking at the house from outside.

Visiting the Moriyama Family Residence Main House

The exterior of the Moriyama Family Residence Main House can be seen at any time, but the rooms and transoms can only be seen on a booked tour, led by a city staff member or a volunteer history guide. The city has not published a policy on photography indoors, so ask when you make your reservation. Booking details and directions are on the page for the Moriyama Family Residence as a whole.