Kawai Family Residence (Nagaokakyo)

The Kawai Family Residence and Its Layout

The Kawai Family Residence (河合家住宅, Kawai-ke Jūtaku) is a farmhouse estate on the old Tanba Kaido road in Ao Kajigamae, Nagaokakyo City, Kyoto Prefecture, built around a main house of the late Edo period (1751 to 1830), whose five structures (main house, storehouse, front gate and high wall, roji gate and partition wall, and tsukiji wall) were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2011. Properties with the same Japanese name are registered in Gujo, Gifu Prefecture, in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, and elsewhere; they are separate places.

The plot lies on the east side of the road, and the main house faces west onto it. Along the road edge runs a high wall of the Taisho period, its central bay forming the front gate. In the northwest corner of the plot a storehouse stands facing east, and between the main house and the storehouse a small roji gate and a short partition wall run east to west, dividing the garden. The garden in front of the formal rooms of the main house is enclosed on two sides by a low tsukiji wall from the late Edo period.

Walking along the road, the first things you notice are the latticed front gate and the high wall, boarded at the base and finished in white plaster above, with the gabled roof of the main house rising behind. All five structures sit close together; by the coordinates in the national database, even the two farthest apart are less than 30 m from each other.

The Tanba Kaido and a Large Otokuni Farmhouse

Nagaokakyo City's cultural property plan traces the Tanba Kaido as a road along the foot of the Nishiyama hills. It left the Saigoku Kaido at Choshi Hakkaku, ran north from Tomooka along the eastern bank of Hachijogaike pond, then turned west through Chohoji and Ao before joining the San'in road at Kutsukake in Oe. Pilgrims bound for the temples and shrines of the western hills used it, and it carried goods between Tanba and the Yodo River system. The plan names the Kawai Family Residence, with the Sato and Tamura family residences, as houses that keep the feel of this old road.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house of the Kawai Family Residence as an example of a large farmhouse of the Otokuni district, the area southwest of Kyoto. It is a single-storey house 13 m wide at the front, with deep Geya lean-to eaves on three sides and its living rooms arranged in two rows toward the north; the northern row holds the Buddhist altar room and the formal reception room.

Read by date, the estate took its basic shape in the late Edo period. The main house, the storehouse and the tsukiji wall belong to that time, and the main house was extended in the mid-Meiji period (1883 to 1897). The front gate and high wall on the road and the roji gate and partition wall in the garden date from the Taisho period (1912 to 1926), and the roji gate was repaired in the early Showa period (1926 to 1945). What survives is an Edo-period farmhouse layout overlaid with Taisho-period work along the road and around the garden.

The Five Registered Structures

All five structures of the Kawai Family Residence were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 26, 2011, under consecutive numbers 26-0360 to 26-0364. The main house was registered as a model of its type of design, and the other four for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• Kawai Family Residence Main House: late Edo period, extended mid-Meiji; wooden, single storey, tiled roof, building area 159 m²
• Kawai Family Residence Storehouse: late Edo period; earthen-walled, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 23 m²
• Kawai Family Residence Front Gate and High Wall: Taisho period; wooden, tiled roof, 6.5 m in length
• Kawai Family Residence Roji Gate and Partition Wall: Taisho period, repaired early Showa; wooden gate roofed in bamboo, 1.4 m wide; earthen wall 3.0 m long
• Kawai Family Residence Tsukiji Wall: late Edo period; earthen wall with tiled coping, 10 m in length

Four of the five have tiled roofs; only the roji gate is roofed with split moso bamboo. White Shikkui lime plaster is common to the storehouse, the high wall and the tsukiji wall, while the walls themselves differ in build: the high wall is timber-framed, and the partition wall and tsukiji wall are earthen.

Visiting the Kawai Family Residence

The Kawai Family Residence is a private home, and no notice of public openings could be found in Nagaokakyo City's materials as of October 2026. Please view it from the road only, without lingering at the gate or peering into the grounds, and keep photography to the exterior as seen from the public road.

From the road you can see the front gate, the high wall and the main house behind them. The high wall is only 6.5 m long, but how much of the storehouse in the northwest corner, or of the roji gate and tsukiji wall beside the main house and around its garden, can be seen from the road has not been confirmed.

By public transport, take a Hankyu Bus from the west exit of JR Nagaokakyo Station or from Nagaoka-Tenjin Station on the Hankyu Kyoto Line to the Asahigaoka Home-mae stop, which Komyoji Temple gives as its nearest stop; the ride takes about 15 to 23 minutes from JR Nagaokakyo and about 10 to 16 minutes from Nagaoka-Tenjin. The Kawai Family Residence stands on the Tanba Kaido about 300 m south of that stop, measured in a straight line from map coordinates. Komyoji lies in the same village of Ao, and in the autumn foliage season both the road and the buses are crowded.