Nishio Family Residence

About the Nishio Family Residence

The Nishio Family Residence (西尾家住宅, Nishio-ke Jūtaku) is a house on the old road through Nahari, Aki District, Kochi Prefecture, whose late Edo-period main house, once an inn, and five early Taisho-period outbuildings and walls were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 18 October 2000. The six registered parts are the main house, kitchen, barn, toilet, storehouse and brick wall.

All six are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties under a single criterion, that each "serves as a model of form" in its design. Their registration numbers run unbroken, 39-0020 through 39-0025. Kochi Prefecture's list shows that on the same day 22 structures at seven addresses in Nahari were registered together, among them the Fujimura silk mill and the Takezaki and Mori family houses. The Nishio Family Residence was one of that batch.

We found no public source saying how long the inn operated or when the Nishio family came to live here. This site treats the six items as one property because they share a lot number, a registration date and a continuous run of registration numbers.

An Inn in a Road Town

Nahari grew at a fork in the road. One route, the Tosa Higashi Kaidō, ran on toward Cape Muroto; the other, the Noneyama Kaidō, climbed over the mountains toward Awa, present-day Tokushima. Traditional buildings still line the old road through town. A 2005 study by the architectural historian Yoichi Miura describes Nahari as a country market town whose merchants built shops and homes along the main street. When Nahari was raised from village to town status in 1916, it was one of the most prosperous communities in eastern Kochi, and most of its surviving buildings date from then until the 1940s.

The main house of the Nishio Family Residence faces that old road on its north side. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a former hatagoya, a traveller's inn. The inn dates to the late Edo period; the kitchen, barn, toilet, storehouse and brick wall behind it were added in the early Taisho period, around the years Nahari became a town.

How the Property Is Laid Out

Read together, the six official descriptions give a clear plan of the Nishio Family Residence. The main house runs east to west along the road, with a two-storey wing added on its west end. Behind it lies a courtyard: the kitchen stands on the east side, and the toilet and barn stand opposite on the west, the toilet built against the north end of the barn.

A two-storey storehouse occupies the southeast corner of the lot. A brick wall encloses the west and south sides, starting at the southwest end of the barn, turning at the southwest corner of the lot and meeting the storehouse. A single gateway opens in the western part of the south wall.

If the main house is the face shown to the road, the storehouse and brick wall form the back. The Agency singles out that rear view: white Tosa-shikkui plaster on the storehouse set against the brick of the wall.

An Edo Inn and Its Taisho Outbuildings

The six parts of the Nishio Family Residence belong to two periods. The main house is late Edo; the other five are all early Taisho. The materials vary as well. The main house, kitchen, barn and toilet are timber buildings with tiled roofs, the storehouse is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri plastered storehouse, and the wall is brick.

Each building has its own roof form. The main house and storehouse are gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri), the kitchen has a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof, and the barn and toilet are hipped (Yosemune-zukuri). All are covered with Sangawara-buki pantiles. The main house, at 124 square metres, is the largest; the toilet, at 3.6 square metres, is the smallest.

Visiting the Nishio Family Residence

The Nishio Family Residence is a private home, and we found no notice of public opening. You cannot enter the buildings or the grounds, so a visit means looking at what can be seen from the road. Please stop where you will not disturb the household or block the street.

The nearest station is Nahari, the terminus of the Tosa Kuroshio Railway's Gomen-Nahari Line. The house is about 300 metres from the station in a straight line, roughly a five-minute walk. Some trains from Kochi Station run through onto the Gomen-Nahari Line and reach Nahari in a little over an hour. By car, head east on National Route 55 from the Nankoku interchange. There is no visitor parking.

From the old road you see the front of the main house. The kitchen, barn and toilet stand inside the lot around the courtyard, so little of them is visible from outside. Other properties named Nishio Family Residence exist in Tamba-Sasayama (Hyogo) and Miyama (Kyoto), and there is a Former Nishio Family Residence in Suita (Osaka); none of them is this house.