Mori Family Residence (Former Nomura Mokuma Residence)

A Transport Magnate's House in Nahari

The Mori Family Residence (Former Nomura Mokuma Residence) (森家住宅（旧野村茂久馬邸）, Mori-ke Jūtaku, Kyū Nomura Mokuma-tei) is a private house compound at Otsu 2595 in Nahari Town, Aki District, Kochi Prefecture, made up of a mid-Meiji storehouse and an early Taisho main house and stone walls, and its five components were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2000.

The name carries two families. Mori is the household that holds the property now; the bracketed part records the man who built it as his home in Nahari, the businessman Nomura Mokuma, whom the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes as the figure remembered as the "transport king of Tosa", Tosa being the old name for Kochi.

The five entries were registered together in the 26th round, under the consecutive numbers 39-0026 to 39-0030. They fall under two criteria. The main house and the storehouse were listed as buildings that serve as a model of design; the three walls as works that would not be easy to reproduce. Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property system lists structures one by one, which is why each wall counts as its own entry.

Nahari, Timber and the Nomura Name

Nahari sits where two old roads part: the Tosa Higashi Kaido, which follows the coast toward Cape Muroto and on to Awa (Tokushima), and the Noneyama Kaido, which climbs over the mountains. In the years when the Yanase Forest Railway was running, the town was the point from which cedar and other timber brought down from the Yanase forests upstream on the Nahari River was shipped out to the Kansai region.

The Mori Family Residence (Former Nomura Mokuma Residence) is one of the component properties of the Japan Heritage story "From Forest Railway to Japan's Top Yuzu Road", certified by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. The component entry, written by the Nahari Town Board of Education, identifies Nomura Mokuma as the founder of the Nomura-gumi Kosakusho works, which built a locomotive known as the Nomura-type L69 for the Yanase Forest Railway. The same entry treats the house as representative of the period when the railway was busy and the timber trade kept Nahari prosperous.

The East Kochi tourism board's profile of the town names him as a Nahari-born entrepreneur who helped build up transport by land and by sea. Read that way, the Western-style face the main house turns to the street makes sense. This was the home-town house of a man whose business was moving things.

How the Compound Fits Together

The Mori Family Residence (Former Nomura Mokuma Residence) is bounded by roads on the west and south and by a narrow lane on the east. The oldest structure is the storehouse on the north side of the plot, built in the middle of the Meiji era and said to date from the time of Mokuma's predecessor as head of the household. It is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri block formed from three storehouses joined under staggered ridges.

The main house came in the early Taisho period. Its two-storey block runs north to south along the road, 10 Ken long, which gives a street frontage of about 18 metres, and a single-storey living wing projects from its east side.

The three walls are also early Taisho work. The West Stone Wall runs 6 metres south along the road from the southwest corner of the main house. The South Stone Wall follows the southern edge of the plot for 19 metres, turning as it goes. The East Stone Wall stands 19 metres along the lane. Together they come to 44 metres. All three are ishiguro, the local name for walls of beach stones laid in a binding mix, and all share the same section: 50 centimetres thick and 2.5 metres high.

On foot, the natural circuit is to take in the main house from the road on the west, pick up the West Stone Wall at the southwest corner, follow the South Stone Wall along the southern road, then turn into the eastern lane to find the back door in the East Stone Wall. The storehouse lies deep in the plot behind the main house, so very little of it shows from outside.

Visiting and Getting There

The Mori Family Residence (Former Nomura Mokuma Residence) is a lived-in private home and is not open to the public on a regular basis. Visitors see it from the road and the lane. There is no published policy on photography; please stay off the property and keep in mind that people live here.

Town walks are led by a local volunteer group, the Nahari Ura-no-kai. According to the Kochi Tourism Guide Association, its model route through the old streets (about 120 minutes on foot) includes the house. Bookings are needed by the day before, or seven days ahead for parties of ten or more, and the fee starts at 2,000 yen per group of ten or more, with smaller parties handled by arrangement.

By rail, take the Tosa Kuroshio Railway Gomen-Nahari Line to its terminus at Nahari Station. The house is about a 10-minute walk northeast of the station. The line starts at Gomen, where it meets the JR Dosan Line, and the ride from Gomen to Nahari takes about an hour. By car, allow about 90 minutes from Harimayabashi in central Kochi City. We could not confirm any visitor parking at the house. Fees and booking terms were checked on 27 September 2026.