Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence

About the Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence

The Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence (新麹屋柏原家住宅, Shinkōjiya Kashiwabara-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant compound on the old Satsuma Kaidō highway in Ogawa, Ogawa-machi, Uki City, Kumamoto Prefecture, built around a main house of 1883, and four of its structures (the main house, an annex, a gate with its wall, and a courtyard wall) are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan.

Shinkōjiya, literally "the new kōji house", is the Kashiwabara family's trading name. Uki City also writes it with the older character form 新麴屋. We found no official record explaining how the name came about, so we leave its origin open.

According to Uki City, the Kashiwabara family ran a wide range of businesses from the late Edo period into the Taishō era: moneylending, the tea trade, and the founding of a mill. The city counts the house among the leading merchant families of Ogawa. Two city pages disagree on whether that mill made paper or reeled silk, and we have not tried to settle the point here.

A Post Town on the Satsuma Kaidō

Under the Hosokawa lords of the Edo period, Ogawa prospered as a post town on the Satsuma Kaidō, the highway running south through Kyushu toward Kagoshima. The old post-town street survives as Ogawa's shopping street, and the Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence stands on it. Uki City describes the house as keeping the building style of the old Ogawa-juku townhouses.

The compound faces south onto the old highway. The national descriptions place both the main house and the courtyard wall on the road frontage, and the gate opens on the same south side. From the street, the plastered front of the main house and the gate and wall read as one continuous frontage.

How the Compound Fits Together

The main house is the core of the Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence. Its eastern half is the original building; a reception wing of formal rooms was added to the west. The gate and wall stand at the western end of the south frontage, directly in front of that wing's entrance.

Behind the reception wing, joined to it by a covered corridor, is a two-storey annex with its ridge running east to west. Between the main house and the annex lies a courtyard, closed off by the courtyard wall.

The buildings went up in this order. The main house dates from 1883 (Meiji 16) and was enlarged in 1898. The gate and wall belong to the Taishō era (1912 to 1926), and the annex was built in 1922. The courtyard wall is dated to the later Taishō years (1919 to 1926); Uki City narrows this to about 1921 or 1922. The main house was renovated in 1967.

One Uki City page gives the main house's date as "Meiji 16 (1833)". Meiji 16 corresponds to 1883, so we follow the Agency for Cultural Affairs record and use 1883.

How It Came to Be Registered

The main house, annex, and gate and wall were registered together on 25 February 2016 as numbers 43-0153 to 43-0155. The courtyard wall joined them later, on 24 June 2021, as number 43-0183.

All four were registered under the same criterion, as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the nation. The courtyard wall was damaged in the Kumamoto earthquakes of April 2016, and its registration followed the repairs. That story is told on the courtyard wall's own page.

Visiting the Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence

The Shinkojiya Kashiwabara Family Residence is still a family home. There are no set opening days and no admission fee. Uki City asks anyone who wants to look around to get in touch in advance, and notes that the owners are sometimes away. The contact given on the city's page is the Shinkōjiya telephone, 0964-43-0445.

Without an arrangement, please keep to the street and view the house from the old highway. We found no official guidance on photography, so be considerate of the people who live here, and if it matters to you, ask when you call.

By car, take National Route 3 to Sunagawa Bridge and follow Prefectural Road 32 (the Ogawa-Kashima road) east for about 1,000 metres. The house is about 1,200 metres southeast of AEON Mall Uki. Uki City notes a parking space behind the house, on its north side.

The nearest station is Ogawa on the JR Kagoshima Main Line, about 20 minutes from Kumamoto Station. A 2018 Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism document puts the walk from Ogawa Station to an old merchant house on the same shopping street at 30 minutes, or 10 minutes by taxi.