Sameshima Family Residence

A Meiji Merchant House Built Like a Samurai Estate

The Sameshima Family Residence (鮫島家住宅, Sameshima-ke Jūtaku) is a late Meiji-period house compound in the Kaseda Fumoto district of Kaseda Takeda, Minamisatsuma City, Kagoshima Prefecture, whose main house, inner storehouse, storehouse, well, gate, courtyard garden gate and stone wall were entered as seven Registered Tangible Cultural Property listings on 25 July 2011. In the Japan Heritage material on Satsuma's samurai towns it appears as the Sameshima (Kenji) Family Residence, a label that separates it from a second Sameshima house a short walk to the east.

Fumoto is a word peculiar to Satsuma. The domain governed its territory through outlying districts called tojo, and each had a quarter at the foot of a hill where the rural samurai, the goshi, lived. Kaseda's began as a warrior settlement around the medieval Beppu Castle and was laid out in its present form under the Shimazu family, who held the area from the mid-15th century. The Masuyama irrigation channel, cut around the middle of the 18th century, still runs along the foot of the garden walls.

According to the Japan Heritage description, the Sameshima Family Residence dates from around 1902, and the family behind it ran farming and fishing businesses and founded the Nansatsuma Bank. That timing is the interesting part. The samurai class had been abolished for three decades, yet the house was given the full samurai frontage: a gatehouse, a storehouse on the street, dressed stone and clipped hedges. The walls and hedges are said to survive from the earlier estate.

Seven Listings, One Compound

All seven were registered together, as numbers 46-0095 to 46-0101, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. Four are buildings: the main house, the inner storehouse, the storehouse and the gate. Three are classed as other structures: the well, the courtyard garden gate and the stone wall. The registration, in other words, protects the layout of an estate rather than a single fine building.

The street side faces south. There the plastered storehouse, built in Dozo-zukuri fashion, and the 2-storey Nagayamon gatehouse stand side by side, both lifted on high courses of cut stone. The wall starts west of the storehouse, runs east from the gate along the street, turns north to close the east side of the lot and bends west at its far end. At 72 metres, it and the hedge on top of it are what most visitors will actually see of the Sameshima Family Residence.

The roofed stone well lies at the far end of the street frontage and is registered under a separate plot number, 18274-1. Within the lot, the courtyard garden gate divides the path to the house from the garden in front of the reception rooms. The main house is built as two linked blocks, a reception wing and a kitchen wing, and the inner storehouse stands north of the kitchen. The Minamisatsuma tourism association's walking map notes that the garden once drew on spring water and, now that the spring has gone, is kept as a dry garden.

All seven are dated to the late Meiji period; the main house, inner storehouse and courtyard garden gate record a renovation in 1998. About 120 metres to the east, at 17824-1 Kaseda Takeda, stands the earlier Sameshima Hiroshi Family Residence, whose four listings date from the first half of the Meiji era.

The Wider District

On 23 December 2019 the district was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings under the name Minamisatsuma-shi Kaseda Fumoto, covering 20.0 hectares. The selection cites the curving streets and plot lines, the Masuyama channel and its stone bridges, and the walls, hedges and simple bracket-armed gates that frame each lot.

The same year, Japan Heritage recognised a Kagoshima-wide story on the fumoto samurai quarters, and the Sameshima Family Residence was listed among its component properties. Chiran and Izumi are known for estates that keep their Edo-period appearance. Kaseda is different: many of its houses were rebuilt after the Meiji Restoration yet kept the samurai frontage, and this compound is one of the clearest late Meiji examples.

Visiting and Getting There

The Sameshima Family Residence is privately owned and its interior is not open to the public. Neither Minamisatsuma City nor the city tourism association lists any viewing arrangements or special openings (checked September 2026). From the street you can see the storehouse, the gatehouse, the stone wall and the hedge; the main house, inner storehouse and courtyard garden gate stand behind the storehouse and gate and cannot be taken in as a whole from outside. Please stay off the property and keep photographs to the street frontage.

Kagoshima Kotsu buses run from Kagoshima-Chuo Station to Kaseda. The direct services via the Nansatsu cross-peninsula road and the Skyline take about 55 minutes; buses via Ijuin take about 1 hour 30 minutes. The adult fare is 1,380 yen according to the tourism association (as of October 2025). From the Kaseda terminus the house is roughly a 10-minute walk, judging by the map.

Drivers can use the free parking space at Takeda Shrine at the southern end of the district and walk north along the walled lanes. The tourism association's Kaseda Fumoto walking map marks the house.