Former Miura Family Residence

About the Former Miura Family Residence

The Former Miura Family Residence (旧三浦家住宅, Kyū Miura-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant's house in Aokicho, Susaki City, Kochi Prefecture, where six structures built between the mid-Meiji era (1883 to 1897) and the early Showa era were entered on the register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 25, 2016. They carry the consecutive registration numbers 39-0284 to 39-0289, and the owner is Susaki City.

The Miura were a merchant family in business in Susaki from the last years of the Edo period. Susaki City lists sake brewing, rice dealing, papermaking and finance among its businesses and credits the family with a large part in the growth of the town. Today the city runs the house as the Susaki Machikado Gallery, and the facility keeps "Former Miura House" in its name.

Stand at the crossroads and the first thing you notice is color: the shop is black, the storehouse just behind it is white.

A Paper Merchant in a Harbor Town

Susaki grew around a deep natural harbor where goods from the surrounding mountain villages were gathered and shipped. The gallery's own history of the Former Miura Family Residence places the family business, Miura Shoten, among the town's leading merchant houses: a wholesaler of forest products and paper on a corner of the old main road. Before the war it is said to have dealt in kozo and mitsumata, the fibers used for washi paper, and even to have sent trading ships as far as the Korean Peninsula, though the gallery presents this as local tradition rather than documented fact.

The same account links the Miura to buyers in the Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe region through the timber and forest trade of the Shimanto River basin, and says the main house was used to lodge and entertain guests who had traveled a long way. Trade in the shop, hospitality in the main house, valuables in the storehouse: the buildings divide the work of a merchant household.

Susaki City also notes that the office inside the shop still shows traces of a period when it was used by a securities firm. The dates and circumstances of that later use are not given in the city's or the gallery's published material.

Layout and Building Sequence

The Former Miura Family Residence occupies a corner lot with streets on the east and south. Putting the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions together gives this layout. The shop stands at the southeast corner facing the intersection, with the storehouse attached on its north side. The main house joins the shop on the west, and the annex at the back of the lot to the north is linked to the main house by a corridor. Along the south edge, the front gate stands at the east end, next to the shop, with a wooden wall running west from it. On the east edge, a concrete block wall runs north from the shop's east face.

• Shop (mid-Meiji era, two-story dozo-zukuri / registration no. 39-0284)
• Main House (Taisho era, one-story timber / registration no. 39-0285)
• Storehouse (Taisho era, two-story reinforced concrete / registration no. 39-0286)
• Annex (early Showa era, one-story timber / registration no. 39-0287)
• Front Gate and Wall (Taisho era, gate 1.8 meters wide, wall 9.3 meters in total length / registration no. 39-0288)
• Block Wall (Taisho era, 8.2 meters long / registration no. 39-0289)

The agency's database dates the shop to the mid-Meiji era, the main house, storehouse, front gate and wall and block wall to the Taisho era (1912 to 1926), and the annex to the early Showa era (1926 to 1945). The sequence reads naturally: first a shop on the street, then in Taisho a residence, a storehouse and a proper street frontage, and finally an annex added at the back.

The six were registered under two different criteria. The shop and the storehouse count as structures "not easily reproduced", valued for how they are built: black-plastered dozo-zukuri in one case, reinforced concrete in the other. The main house, annex, front gate and wall and block wall were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape, as parts of a merchant's compound that shapes the streetscape.

Sources differ on the dates. Susaki City and the gallery describe a plastered merchant building "said to have been built around 1916", and the gallery dates Miura Shoten to the middle of the Taisho era. The agency's database puts the shop in the mid-Meiji era and the main house in the Taisho era. This site follows the agency's database for the date of each building.

From Merchant House to Gallery

The Former Miura Family Residence opened as the Susaki Machikado Gallery in February 2010. It was one piece of a city plan to treat all of Susaki as a kind of expressway service area, so that the extension of the Kochi Expressway farther west would not leave the town as a place people simply drove past. A major renovation followed in 2014 to mark the 60th anniversary of the city's founding.

The rooms now host exhibitions of local artists and traditional crafts, the artist-in-residence program Gendai Chiho-tan, in which contemporary artists live and work in Susaki for a period, and meetings and classes held by local groups who rent the space. What you find inside the Miura rooms changes with each show.

Visiting and Access

The Former Miura Family Residence is open as the Susaki Machikado Gallery from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It closes on Mondays (or the next weekday when Monday is a public holiday), over the New Year from December 29 to January 3, and on some days while exhibitions are being installed (checked September 27, 2026). Neither the city nor the gallery lists an admission charge, and the Kochi Prefecture listing simply invites visitors to drop in. Check the gallery's website or Facebook page for current exhibitions before you go.

How much of the interior you can see depends on the exhibition and on rental bookings; the shop, main house and storehouse are the rooms most often used for shows. We found no general statement on photography, so ask at the reception desk, especially where artworks are on display. The exterior can be seen from the streets on the east and south: the shop and storehouse from the corner, the front gate and wall from the south side.

The nearest station is Susaki on the JR Dosan Line. The gallery gives the distance as about 600 meters, a 5 to 8 minute walk; it stands about 100 meters south of the Susaki No. 2 Joint Government Building, which houses the tax office and legal affairs bureau. By car it is about 3 minutes from Susaki-chuo IC on the Kochi Expressway, and there is parking for 6 cars.

The gallery gives its address as 1-16 Aokicho, while the agency's database registers the shop, main house, storehouse and annex at 7-1 Aokicho and the front gate and wall and block wall at 1763 Aokicho. All three refer to the same corner property.