Former Kacho Family Main Building

A Half-Timbered House Behind a Bamboo Temple

The former Kachō Residence main house (旧華頂家住宅主屋), universally known in Kamakura as the former Kachōnomiya residence (旧華頂宮邸, Kyū Kachōnomiya-tei), is a half-timbered Western-style house of 1929 in the Jōmyōji district of Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2006.

The popular name needs explaining, because it is not quite accurate and everyone uses it anyway.

The Kachōnomiya were a branch of the imperial family founded in 1868. When the fourth head died without an heir in 1924, the line's descendants continued in the peerage rather than the imperial house. Marquis Kachō Hironobu built this house in 1929 as a private residence, so strictly it was never an imperial villa. The name stuck because of where the family came from, and Kamakura City, which has owned the property since 1996, uses it too.

The marquis and his wife, a daughter of Prince Kan'in, are said to have lived here only a few years. Ownership changed hands repeatedly afterwards.

The Building and Its Garden

The house sits towards the northern end of its plot, with a French formal garden laid out to the south.

Construction is timber, recorded in the register as three storeys above ground and one below, roofed in copper. The Agency for Cultural Affairs description puts the same building slightly differently, as two storeys with a basement and an attic floor under a gabled copper roof, which is the same fabric counted by a different convention. Rooms are arranged in two ranks, front and back, and a single-storey service wing adjoins the rear elevation. Floor area is 315 square metres.

The exterior is half-timbered, the manner in which structural posts and beams are left exposed against infill panels, common in European building between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and revived by later architects reaching for a particular kind of domestic warmth. Sections are faced in tile.

Copper roofing ages through a long sequence of colours. New sheet is reddish orange, darkens to near black, and eventually turns green as verdigris forms. Partial reroofing completed in the 2024 financial year means parts of the roof are now at opposite ends of that sequence, which makes the contrast between old and new surfaces unusually legible.

The registration criterion applied here differs from most Kamakura entries. Rather than being cited as a model of design, the house was registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the country, register number 14-0124. That reading takes the building and the geometric garden together as a single composition.

A fountain in the garden had been out of action since the city acquired the property. Repairs were completed and it began running again in December 2025. The lion at its centre is finely made and repays a close look.

Visiting

This is the rare pre-war Kamakura house that can actually be visited, which sets it apart from most privately owned registered properties in the city.

The garden is open all year

Admission is free and no booking is needed. Opening hours run from 10am to 4pm between April and September, and from 10am to 3pm between October and March. The site closes on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays; when one of those days is a public holiday the garden opens and the following weekday closes instead. It also closes over the new year period. The building interior cannot be entered on ordinary open days.

The interior opens twice a year

Two building-opening events are held annually, in spring and autumn, each running across a small number of days. These are also free and unbooked, though numbers inside are limited to protect the fabric and queuing is common. A teahouse on the grounds called Muian, together with its Japanese garden, is normally closed and has been shown during some of these openings. Dates are announced on the city's website and are not fixed far in advance.

Rules worth knowing before you go

Photography restrictions here are stricter than at most Japanese heritage sites, and the city introduced them after complaints. Video recording is prohibited throughout, indoors and out. Commercial shooting is prohibited. Props and brought-in items may not be used, tripods, monopods, reflectors and selfie sticks are not allowed indoors, model shoots with multiple photographers are not permitted, and groups of five or more may not shoot together. Ordinary snapshots of the building and garden and one-to-one personal photographs are fine, with a couple of frames per spot and no lingering.

The house is not step-free. Visitors needing assistance should bring a companion; electric wheelchairs must be exchanged for a manual chair provided by the city. Prams cannot be taken inside and are checked at the entrance. Slippers are provided at the door and shoes are carried in a bag. There are no toilets on site and no parking. Eating and drinking on the grounds is not permitted, with sensible exceptions for heat and medication.

Getting there

From the east exit of JR Kamakura Station, take a Keikyū bus from stand 4 bound for Kanazawa-Hakkei Station, Kamakura Reien Seimon-mae Tachiarai, or the Highland loop, and get off at Jōmyōji. The house is about six minutes on foot, past Hōkokuji. Walking the whole way from Kamakura Station takes around thirty-five minutes.

Hōkokuji, the temple famous for its bamboo grove, sits directly on the approach and its public toilets are the nearest ones. Jōmyōji, one of the five great Zen temples of Kamakura, is a short walk away. The residence stands in a quiet valley of private houses, so noise on the approach and while queuing is a genuine consideration.