Yoshimura Family Residence Main House

A Long Two-Storey House Set Back from the Street

Yoshimura Family Residence Main House (吉村家住宅主屋, Yoshimura-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a two-storey wooden house of the mid-Meiji years, 1883 to 1897, in Kawashiri 4-chome, Minami-ku, Kumamoto City, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on August 6, 2025. It covers a building area of 306 square meters and was altered around 1962.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as the main house of a merchant family in the brewing trade in the river port of Kawashiri. The roof is a gabled form laid with pantiles, its ridge running east to west over a long two-storey block. Rather than meeting the street, the Yoshimura main house sits well back behind the gates and walls on the south side of the lot.

Family Rooms to the East, Guest Rooms to the West

Inside, the plan splits along its length. The eastern rooms served the household's daily life; the western ones were for receiving visitors. A single building thus holds both the private house and the reception wing, divided east and west.

At the northwest, on the guest side, is a suite of connected Zashiki rooms opened to one another with sliding doors. It is furnished with a tokonoma alcove, a Tokowaki with shelves beside it, and a hira-shoin, a flat writing-window set into the wall instead of projecting outward like a Tsukeshoin.

Carved Ranma transoms run above the partitions between these rooms, and the Agency singles out their delicate detailing.

Why the Main House Was Listed

The Yoshimura Family Residence Main House holds registration number 43-0208 and was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. The Agency values it as a well-appointed house of the merchant families who prospered in modern Kawashiri.

Sources differ on its age. Kumamoto City's Kawashiri 360 site dates the Yoshimura residence to the late Edo period and presents it as the family head's house surviving from the founding of the Zuiyo brewery in 1867. Zuiyo's own website likewise calls the "Yoshimura main house" the place where its brewing began.

The Agency's database, however, dates the Yoshimura main house to the mid-Meiji years. One reading is that the present house went up on the founding site some two decades after 1867, but no source found for this article confirms a rebuilding. This site follows the Agency's date.

Seeing the Yoshimura Main House

The Yoshimura Family Residence Main House remains the family's home and is not open to visitors. The alcove area of the formal rooms can be seen in a photograph titled "zashiki toko mawari" on the Agency's database page.

Because the house stands back from the street, expect to see little more than its roof beyond the gates and walls on the south side. Stay off the grounds, and photograph only from the public road without disturbing residents or traffic.