Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Main House

What the Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Main House Is

The Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Main House (島内克之家住宅主屋) is a rural house built around 1850 in Kamioka, Noichi-cho, Konan City, Kochi Prefecture, enlarged with a two-storey wing in the Meiji era and listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 June 2002.

It stands toward the north of the family compound, its ridge running east to west, with a garden laid out in front of it to the south. The house measures 5 and a half Ken along the ridge by 6 ken deep, under a hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof of pantiles, Sangawara-buki, and covers 135 square metres.

Of the seven registered structures on the estate, this is the only one older than the Meiji era. The storehouse, gate and the rest date from 1911, which makes the Shimanouchi house roughly sixty years their senior.

Why It Was Listed

The Main House was registered as a model of its building type. Only it and the storehouse were listed on that criterion; the other five entries were registered for their contribution to the landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry picks out the plan first: six rooms, two rows of three, inside a footprint that is deeper than it is long. The ridge runs 5 and a half ken, the depth across it is 6. A ridge normally runs along the longer side of a building, so the reversal gives the house its squarish, heavy-roofed outline.

Second, the shikoro-bisashi, a pent eave pitched at a different angle from the main roof so that the roofline appears to break and step down. It wraps three sides of the house: south, east and north.

Third, the Meiji addition. Toward the west, a two-storey wing with its own hip-and-gable roof was set on a north-south axis, crossing the older east-west block. Builders in Tosa, the old name for Kochi, call this arrangement tombo-zukuri, dragonfly construction. The Edo-period plan was kept intact below while the house grew upward, and that sequence is written plainly into the roofs.

What to Look For

The roofs are the thing to study on the Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Main House. A long hip-and-gable roof runs east to west, and from its western part a second, taller hip-and-gable rises at right angles. Because the two meet almost in a cross, the silhouette changes sharply as you move around it.

Follow the stepped eaves. The official description lists them on the south, east and north faces only; the west is not mentioned. The break in the roofline runs round three sides and stops.

The plan itself is hidden, but the 6-ken depth shows on the outside as sheer bulk of roof. The broad gable ends, slightly wider than the ridge is long, come directly from that proportion.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs database carries photographs of the Main House, which are the easiest way to see how the two roofs lock together.

Visiting

The Shimanouchi Katsuyuki Family Residence Main House is a private home and its interior is not open. Neither the Konan City nor the Kochi Prefecture cultural property lists give any visiting information (checked 26 September 2026).

The house stands at the back of the compound, behind the gatehouse and the inner wall, so from the south front both structures sit in the line of sight. Whether the upper roof can be picked out from outside the property has not been confirmed.

No notice about photography was found, but this is a lived-in house; keep to the road and do not enter the grounds.