Iwamura Family Residence (Former Kuroiwa Family Residence)

About the Iwamura Family Residence (Former Kuroiwa Family Residence)

The Iwamura Family Residence (Former Kuroiwa Family Residence) (岩村家住宅（旧黒岩家住宅）, Iwamura-ke Jūtaku) is an old family estate in the Maejima neighborhood of Kawakita, Aki City, Kochi Prefecture, where four structures, a late Edo-period main house and tiled earthen wall from before 1868 and an early Meiji storehouse and gate with palanquin room, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 15, 2024.

The estate sits near the middle of Maejima, a small settlement ringed by an irrigation channel. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house as preserving the character of a late Edo-period goshi house, the home of a samurai-rank family that lived out in the countryside rather than in the castle town. Here that household survives together with its outbuildings and wall.

The Kuroiwa name in parentheses preserves the family who once lived here. All four structures were registered for their contribution to Japan's historic landscape, and Aki City lists them together as the 4 properties of the Iwamura Family Residence.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

At the center is the main house, its long roof running east to west and its front turned south. South of it, facing the street, stand the gate and palanquin room: a simple bracket-arm gate with a small room for a palanquin attached on its east side. From the road, this pair is the public face of the estate.

North of the main house is a two-storey storehouse for household goods, which forms the northern edge of the compound. From the east end of the main house, the tiled earthen wall runs north and south along the eastern edge.

So the plan of the Iwamura Family Residence (Former Kuroiwa Family Residence) is easy to hold in your head: the house in the middle, the gate to the south, the storehouse to the north, and the wall to the east. The official commentaries assign each piece exactly that role in the landscape.

Seeing the Estate from the Street

The first thing you meet is the gate and palanquin room on the street to the south, the easiest of the four to see. The face of the gate and the south wall of the palanquin room line up side by side.

Through the gate you glimpse part of the main house's south front, with its entrance in the middle of a lower lean-to. Because the house stands well inside the plot, only part of it is visible. The wall on the east edge and the storehouse at the back are hard to see from the southern street. Each building's own page covers what to look for and how much of it you can see.

Visiting and Getting There

The Iwamura Family Residence (Former Kuroiwa Family Residence) is still a private home. As of September 2026, neither Aki City nor the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists any public opening of the grounds or interiors. Please do not walk through the gate; view the estate from the public road, photograph only from there, and keep the residents and their daily life out of the frame.

The nearest station is Ioki (伊尾木) on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway Gomen-Nahari Line. The estate lies about 1.5 kilometers north of the station in a straight line, roughly a 20-minute walk. Aki Station is about 2.3 kilometers to the west. There is no visitor parking, and the lanes are residential, so if you come by car, avoid stopping on the road to look.