Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence

What the Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Is

The Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence (島内克之家住宅, Shimanouchi Katsuyuki-ke Jūtaku) is a homestead in Kamioka, Noichi-cho, Konan City, Kochi Prefecture, where a main house built around 1850 and six further structures dating from 1911 were listed together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 June 2002. The seven entries carry consecutive register numbers, 39-0048 through 39-0054.

The surname is read Shimanouchi, not Shimauchi. That is the reading given in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, and it is worth getting right before asking anyone locally for directions.

The estate sits near the northeast corner of a section of Kamioka recorded in the land register as 神母屋敷, on the flat farmland east of the Monobe River. A water channel runs down the west side of the plot and turns east along its southern edge. That channel explains a surprising amount of what you see: the long line of storehouse and barn walls on the west, the position of the gatehouse on the south, even the small stone pond that draws its water from it.

An Edo House, a Meiji Remake

Only the main house reaches back into the Edo period. Its single-storey core dates from about 1850, and at some point in the Meiji era a two-storey wing was added toward the west, turning it into what builders in Tosa call a tombo-zukuri, a dragonfly-style composition.

Everything else on the register went up in 1911. A clay-walled storehouse, a barn with a silkworm-rearing floor above, a large gatehouse, walls to either side of the gate, an inner wall dividing garden from work yard, and a small stone pond: the family kept the old house and rebuilt the setting around it in what amounts to a single campaign. That says a good deal about the household's standing at the end of the Meiji era.

The silkworm room is the clearest clue to how the family earned its living. Rearing space was stacked above the barn rather than in the main house, so the working life of the farm stayed in the outbuildings while the house kept its own rooms.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence faces south. The Nagayamon gatehouse stands a little back from the southern channel, running east to west, with a clapboard fence continuing to its west and a stone-based outer wall to its east. Together they form the formal front of the property.

Through the gate lies the work yard. Beyond it an inner wall cuts across from east to west, and on the far side is the garden in front of the main house, which stands toward the north of the plot. A stone wall runs north from the inner wall's east end, with a field beyond it to the east.

West of the main house, the storehouse stands with its ridge running north to south, and the barn and silkworm room continue in line to its south. Seen from the channel, the two read as one long western facade. The water-drawing pond sits northeast of the gate, at the western foot of the northern end of a wall that runs north from the gatehouse; water led in from the southern channel reaches it along the east face of the gatehouse and under that wall.

• Main House (about 1850, Meiji-era additions; register no. 39-0048)
• Storehouse (1911; register no. 39-0049)
• Barn and Silkworm-Rearing Room (1911; register no. 39-0050)
• Nagayamon Gate (1911; register no. 39-0051)
• Outer Wall (1911; register no. 39-0052)
• Inner Wall (1911; register no. 39-0053)
• Water-Drawing Pond (1911; register no. 39-0054)

The listings rest on two criteria. The main house and the storehouse were registered as models of their building type; the other five were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. Walls and a pond barely 1.5 metres square were each given their own entry because it is the whole homestead, not any single building, that carries the value here.

Visiting and Getting There

The Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence is a private home and is not open to visitors. Neither the Konan City nor the Kochi Prefecture cultural property lists mention open days or a way to arrange a visit (checked 26 September 2026). Anyone who goes should stay outside the grounds.

What can be seen from outside is limited. The south front, gatehouse and walls, is the face the estate presents, and the west faces of the storehouse and barn line the channel on that side. The main house, the inner wall and the pond are all inside the compound and should be assumed invisible from beyond it. No notice about photography was found either way, but this is a family's home, and cameras aimed at it are best kept lowered.

The nearest station is Noichi on the Tosa Kuroshio Railway's Gomen-Nahari Line, about 1.3 kilometres east of the house as the crow flies; allow a little over 20 minutes on foot by road. Coming from Kochi, change from the JR Dosan Line at Gomen, although some rapid trains run through from Kochi Station. There is no visitor parking.