Former Hirata Family Residence

What Is the Former Hirata Family Residence?

The Former Hirata Family Residence (旧平田家住宅, Kyū Hirata-ke Jūtaku) is a landowning family's estate in Chiyoda-cho, Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture, where 7 structures built around a main house of about 1870 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on November 17, 2015. The estate is privately owned.

The Hirata family served as Shōya, hereditary village headmen, from the last decades of the Edo period. After the Meiji Restoration the family sent members to the Mie District assembly and supplied a mayor of Yasato Village, a rural municipality now absorbed into the northeast of Yokkaichi. Yokkaichi City singles the Former Hirata Family Residence out because it keeps the complete compound of a local notable as it stood in the Meiji and Taisho eras, rather than a lone house.

Today the shoin, the formal reception wing, doubles as an exhibition venue for Gallery Meguro Togeikan, a ceramics gallery, and the shoin and garden are opened to visitors for a few weeks at a time when shows are on.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The Former Hirata Family Residence sits among fields. A pair of granite gateposts marks the entrance on the south side. Walk through and the main house faces you in the middle of the plot, turned toward the south. The shoin is attached to its west end, with the garden spread out in front of it. A small roofed middle gate and a plastered wall run south from beside the main house's Shikidai entrance porch, closing off the shoin garden from the forecourt you enter first.

Behind the main house, along the north edge, stand two Dozo-zukuri storehouses, the East Storehouse and the West Storehouse. The Rice Storehouse occupies the southeast corner. The two storehouses to the north frame that side of the estate, while the rice store anchors the south.

Dates recorded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs show the compound taking shape over roughly half a century:

• Main House: about 1870, altered about 1921
• Shoin: about 1884
• Middle Gate and Wall: about 1885
• Rice Storehouse: about 1887, altered 1914
• East and West Storehouses: Taisho era (1912 to 1926)
• Gateposts: about 1923

All 7 were registered under the same criterion, as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The Garden in Front of the Shoin

According to local press reports, the garden of the Former Hirata Family Residence was laid out in 1885 by a gardener brought in from Kyoto. Its central pond is shaped like a magatama, the comma-shaped jewel of ancient Japan, and stands for Ise Bay; a large rock at one end plays the part of a waterfall pouring into the bay. Paths lead around the water, and in autumn the enkianthus shrubs turn a deep red.

The garden itself is not one of the registered structures. It was, however, designed to be seen from the shoin's tatami rooms across the veranda, and it dates from the same year as the middle gate. The shoin and the gate were evidently placed with this view in mind.

Visiting and Getting There

The Former Hirata Family Residence is a private property and is normally closed. In recent years, though, it has been opened free of charge for limited periods in spring and autumn. In 2026 it opened in May in two sessions, and in 2025 it was open in autumn until December 9. The openings cover the shoin and the garden, and ceramics and other works are exhibited in the shoin while they run.

There is no fixed annual schedule, so check local news or Gallery Meguro Togeikan's announcements before you go. We found no report of the main house or the storehouses being opened inside, and photography rules should be confirmed on site.

The nearest station to the Former Hirata Family Residence is Hiratsu on the Sangi Railway Sangi Line, about a 13-minute walk away. We could not confirm whether parking is available. Outside the opening periods you cannot enter the grounds; the gateposts and the wall can be seen from the road.