Former Ueno Family Residence

A Headman's Compound in the Hills of Tango

The Former Ueno Family Residence (旧上野家住宅, Kyū Ueno-ke Jūtaku) is the homestead of the Ueno family, grand village headmen of Saihoji (西方寺) in Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, where eight structures centred on a thatched main house of the Tenpō era (1830–1843) were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 3, 2006. Maizuru City owns the property and runs it as a public facility under the name Kasa Area Ōjōya Ueno-ke.

Saihoji is a small farming settlement in the Kasa district, the hilly western side of Maizuru. The compound sits beside the village road, with a long roofed wall turning the corner from the front to the side. Inside rises the big thatched roof of the main house, and around it stand a nagaya, a stable, three earthen storehouses and a miniature shrine to the household god. What makes the place worth the drive is that the whole working set of a rural headman's household is still here, not just the house.

According to the facility's own history, the family traces its origin to Ueno Munenobu, who came from Iga Province to the village of Saihoji in the Kasa district of Tango. The Uenos farmed and raised silkworms on the side. In the time of the ninth head, Yaichirō Munenaga, the Tanabe domain appointed the family ōjōya, a senior shōya responsible for 14 village headmen; from then on each head took the name Yaichirō.

In the Meiji era Ueno Yaichirō (Muneyoshi) sat in the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly for 21 years over 6 terms and is credited with lobbying for a railway line, the improvement of the ports of Maizuru and Miyazu, and the founding of Kyoto University. He later served 3 terms in the House of Representatives, retiring when his term ended in 1908. Sources disagree on whether he was the twelfth or thirteenth head of the family.

Eight Registrations, Several Centuries

The eight registered structures are the main house, the nagaya, the stable, the east, middle and west storehouses, the shrine and the wall. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 26-0214 to 26-0221, and all were registered on the same criterion: that they contribute to the historic landscape of the country. In other words, the value lies less in any single building than in the ensemble.

The buildings do not share a date. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database places the stable, the east and middle storehouses and the shrine in the late Edo period (1751–1829), the main house in the Tenpō era, and the nagaya in the Meiji 10s (1877–1886). The wall was built in the late Edo period and extended in the Taishō era (1912–1925). Maizuru City's records add that the inner reception rooms of the main house are also a Taishō addition.

The west storehouse is the outlier. The national database dates it to the Shōwa 20s (1945–1954), while Maizuru City's Basic Concept for History and Culture puts it in the Meiji 20s. The two readings tell rather different stories about when the compound stopped growing, so both are given here.

Read in order, the eight buildings trace a household adding to its compound generation by generation: a core laid out in the late Edo period, a nagaya in early Meiji, new reception rooms and a longer wall in Taishō, and at least one more storehouse after that.

The garden inside the wall, known as the Ueno Family Garden, was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty by Kyoto Prefecture on March 16, 2007. The buildings are protected on the national register and the garden by the prefecture.

Reading the Layout

The compound faces south. Near the front, southwest of the main house, stands a small earthen-walled shed. This is the stable, modest in size but part of the face the compound shows to the road.

The main house occupies the centre of the plot, facing south. Its thatched hip-and-gable roof is ringed on all four sides by tiled pent roofs, and a guest room called the kami-no-ma juts out to the east. West of the main house the long nagaya runs north to south, facing east.

The storehouses cluster behind the main house. The east and middle storehouses stand side by side in a single row, while the west storehouse sits apart, northwest of the nagaya. The household shrine stands northeast of the main house, facing east.

The wall starts at the front entrance, runs along the south side of the compound, turns north around the garden and ends at the shrine, about 44 metres in all. Along the way it incorporates a privy and a short cross wall with a garden gate that closes off the west side of the garden.

A sensible circuit is to look at the wall and the stable from the road, walk in to face the main house, then go round by the nagaya, the storehouses at the back and the shrine. The road face of the wall is best seen from outside the compound.

Visiting and Getting There

Under Maizuru City's ordinance, the facility opens from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and closes on Wednesdays (the following day when Wednesday is a public holiday) and from December 29 to January 3. Admission is free. The operator may change the hours or close temporarily, and some tourism listings give different times, so check with the city or the facility before setting out.

A café operates in part of the main house; the Kyoto Tourism Federation lists its hours as 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. How much of the interior you can see depends on how the rooms are being used on the day.

By car, the compound is about 5 minutes from the Maizuru-Ōe interchange on the Kyoto Jūkan Expressway, and there is a car park. By rail, take a taxi from Nishi-Maizuru Station on the JR Maizuru Line or the Kyoto Tango Railway Miyamai Line; the ride takes about 20 minutes. The station is a long way off, so a car or taxi is the practical choice.

No published rule on photography turned up. Photographing the exteriors is unlikely to be a problem, but ask the staff before photographing interiors while the café is open or any exhibition inside.