A Village Headman's House on the Terada Road
The Main House of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅主屋, Horike Jūtaku Shuoku) is a farmhouse in the Terada district of Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture, built in Ansei 6 (1859) and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011. It occupies the centre of a walled compound that opens onto a road running east from Terada Station, and it faces north, toward that road, as houses of its class in southern Yamashiro usually did.
The measurements are worth having in mind before you look at it. The building runs 14 metres along its ridge and 9.9 metres in depth, with a total floor area of 238 square metres. The roof is a simple gable clad in sangawara pantiles, and beneath it sits a tsushi half-storey: a low loft under the eaves, used in farmhouses for storage and for the silkworm trays or grain that a household of means accumulated. This is not a two-storey house pretending to be modest. It is a one-storey house with a working attic, and the proportion tells you it belongs to the countryside rather than the town.
Inside, the plan divides cleanly. The western half is doma, packed earth floor, the working half of the house where cooking and farm tasks happened. The eastern half carries six raised rooms arranged in two rows of three, the standard layout of a prosperous late Edo farmhouse in this region. At the centre of the north face is a shikidai, a low formal step-up board set before the entrance. A shikidai was not decoration. It marked a house authorised to receive callers of rank, and its presence here is the clearest architectural signal that the Hori family held office in the village.
Two later additions changed the outline. A wing known as the clinic block was attached to the west face, and a tea room to the east. Agency for Cultural Affairs records date the extensions to the early Meiji period and to around Shōwa 10 (about 1935), which places them well after the original construction and shows the household adapting the building as its role in the community shifted.
Why the Main House Was Registered
Japan protects buildings under two separate legal instruments, and the difference matters when you read a sign or a database entry. Designation as an Important Cultural Property or National Treasure is the older and heavier system, applied to a small number of buildings and carrying strict controls on any alteration. Registration as a Tangible Cultural Property came later, introduced in 1996, and works more lightly: owners keep considerable freedom to repair and use their buildings, and in exchange the state gains a record of structures that matter to the historic character of the country. The Hori main house sits in the second category.
Within that system the Agency for Cultural Affairs applies several criteria, and the one cited for this building is different from the one cited for its neighbours. The storehouses, the gate and the detached rooms were all registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. The main house alone was registered as a model of design, the criterion reserved for buildings whose form and construction stand as an example of their type. The reasoning given is that the house preserves the layout of an upper-tier farmhouse of the late feudal period.
Seven buildings on the site were registered together on the same day: the main house, the detached guest rooms, the northwest storehouse, the old storehouse, the east storehouse, the south storehouse with its adjoining room, and the long gatehouse. Registration numbers 26-0373 through 26-0379 were issued in a single block, which is how the Agency records a compound whose value lies in the assembly rather than in any one structure.
What survives here is a complete Edo-period landholder's establishment: the house at the centre, storehouses ringing it, a gatehouse presenting the whole thing to the road. Compounds of this kind were once common across the Kyoto basin. Very few remain intact.
Seeing the House
The Hori Family Residence is a private home. It is lived in, it is not a museum, and there is no admission, no opening hours and no interior access. Visitors should understand this before making the trip, because the experience on offer is a street-side one.
From the public road the main house is largely screened. What you see first is the frontage formed by the long gatehouse and the northwest storehouse, and the main roof rising behind them. The gable end and the pantile courses read clearly above the wall line, and on a clear afternoon the light picks out the ridge in a way that shows the scale of the building even when the elevation is hidden.
Photography from the public road is a matter of ordinary courtesy rather than rule. Keep the camera on the buildings, do not photograph residents or into the compound, and do not enter the gate. Local residents pass along this road constantly; a quiet ten minutes of looking is welcome, a tripod set up in the middle of the lane is not.
Getting there is straightforward. Terada Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line is roughly 300 metres west, about four or five minutes on foot, and the station is served by local and semi-express trains from Kyoto in around 35 minutes. JR Jōyō Station on the Nara Line lies about 15 minutes east on foot, so the compound sits neatly between the two rail lines.
If you want context for what you are looking at, the Jōyō City Museum of History and Folklore occupies the fourth floor of the Bunka Parc Jōyō complex, five minutes south of Terada Station. Admission is 200 yen for adults, it opens from 10:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, and it closes on Mondays. The permanent display covers the farming tools, documents and village life that the Hori compound was built to serve.
Two Important Cultural Properties stand within walking or short cycling distance. The main hall of Mito Shrine, about 1.3 kilometres east at the foot of Mount Kōnosu, was built in Bunan 5 (1448) and is the oldest surviving building in the city, a single-bay nagare-zukuri hall roofed in cypress bark with a carved kaerumata above the front. The main hall of Kuze Shrine, on the other side of the city centre, is also designated. Both are approachable in a way the Hori house is not, and both give a sense of the older architectural layers of this landscape.
One caution about the name. A different Hori Family Residence in Tatsuno City, Hyōgo Prefecture, is designated an Important Cultural Property and comprises 23 buildings; it was the estate of a village headman under the Hitotsubashi Tokugawa house. English sources sometimes conflate the two. The Jōyō compound described here is a registered property, not a designated one, and the two have no connection.
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Q&A
- Can visitors go inside the Main House of the Hori Family Residence?
- No. The Hori Family Residence is a private home with no public opening and no interior access. The buildings can be viewed only from the public road outside the compound.
- When was the Main House of the Hori Family Residence built, and when was it registered?
- It was built in Ansei 6 (1859), with wings added in the early Meiji period and around 1935. It was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011, under registration number 26-0373.
- How do I reach the Hori Family Residence from Kyoto?
- Take the Kintetsu Kyoto Line to Terada Station, about 35 minutes from Kyoto Station on local or semi-express services. The compound is roughly 300 metres east of the station, four to five minutes on foot.
- Is the Main House of the Hori Family Residence a National Treasure or an Important Cultural Property?
- Neither. It is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, a lighter category introduced in 1996 that records buildings of value while leaving owners considerable freedom to maintain and use them.
- What can actually be seen of the Hori Family Residence from outside?
- The long gatehouse and the northwest storehouse form the street frontage and are clearly visible, with the gabled pantile roof of the main house rising behind them. Photography from the public road is acceptable if you avoid residents and do not enter the compound.
Basic Information
| Name | Main House of the Hori Family Residence (堀家住宅主屋, Horike Jūtaku Shuoku) |
|---|---|
| Location | 67-1 Terada Chūdaishō, Jōyō City, Kyoto Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 26-0373 |
| Year Designated | Registered 25 July 2011 (70th registration round) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | 14 m along the ridge, 9.9 m in depth; floor area 238 m²; timber, single storey with partial second storey, tiled roof |
| Owner | Private (owner name not published in the national database) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public. Exterior viewing from the public road only |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs): Horike Jūtaku Shuoku
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00008724
- Cultural Heritage Online: Horike Jūtaku Shuoku
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/195065
- Jōyō City Board of Education: Cultural Properties
- https://www.kyoto-be.ne.jp/joyou-be/cms/?cat=76
- Jōyō City: History and Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.joyo.kyoto.jp/category/8-3-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
Last verified: 2026.07.29