The Former Matsusaka Gojōban Nagaya: A Samurai Guard's Quarters of 1863
In 1863, twenty samurai families moved into a pair of long, single-story houses on the southeastern edge of Matsusaka Castle, in what is now Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture. Their duty was to guard the castle. The post they held was called goshamban (castle guard duty), and it gave the buildings their name. More than 160 years later the two rows still stand, facing one another across a narrow stone-paved lane, their street fronts screened by tightly clipped hedges of maki (Japanese yew). Descendants of the original families still live in most of the houses.
The complex is officially the Former Matsusaka Gojōban Nagaya, nagaya meaning a long house divided into separate units. It was designated an Important Cultural Property in December 2004. The designation covers two buildings, the east row and the west row, together with their garden plots.
Matsusaka began as a castle town in 1588, when the warlord Gamō Ujisato built Matsusaka Castle. After the Gamō clan was reassigned, the area passed in 1619 to the Kishū Domain, the Wakayama-based fief of a Tokugawa branch house. The domain stationed a warden at Matsusaka to administer its territory in Ise, and for a long time castle security was handled by guards sent up each year from Wakayama. In 1863 the domain replaced that arrangement with a permanent post, and the houses went up on the third bailey (sannomaru) to quarter the twenty guard families.
Why the Buildings Matter
Several row houses for low-ranking samurai survive elsewhere in Japan: the Shibata Domain foot-soldiers' quarters in Niigata (1842), the Asa-Mōri family's Hagi residence row house in Yamaguchi (1856), and the Yamauchi family's lower-residence row house in Kōchi (around 1864). Each of those is a single building. The Matsusaka quarters are the only known example built as two facing rows along a shared lane.
The east row runs 90.9 meters long and 9.4 meters deep; the west row 83.6 meters. Both are single-story with pantile roofs (sangawara-buki). Each was divided into units with a standard frontage of five ken (about 9.1 meters), ten units in the east row and nine in the west. That places these among the largest surviving samurai row houses in the country, both overall and unit by unit. Because the construction date and the history of the residents are both well documented, the buildings also record, in concrete detail, how mid-rank samurai actually lived at the close of the Edo period.
One thing the designation singles out is the setting. Each plot is bounded by a low stone wall, with the maki hedge and a small front garden facing the lane and a kitchen garden behind. The houses and their grounds were judged worth keeping as a single whole, which is why the entire block, not only the structures, falls within the designation.
What to Look For on a Visit
The view down the lane is the image most visitors come for: two unbroken lines of dark tiled roof and pale wall, the maki hedges trimmed to waist height, stone paving running between them. Stand at the southern end early in the morning, before the light turns harsh, and the symmetry of the two rows reads most clearly.
Only one unit is open inside, the house at the northern end of the west row, shown free of charge. Slip off your shoes and you step up from the doma, the earthen-floored passage that runs the full depth of the house, into four tatami rooms set in a regular grid (two of six mats, two of eight). The front eight-mat room keeps its tokonoma alcove and display shelving, and the formal entrance has a low wooden step called a shikidai. Look up in the rear rooms and the roof framing is left bare, a plain Japanese-style truss shown openly rather than hidden behind a ceiling. The other eighteen units are private homes, so keeping your voice down matters here in a way it rarely does at a museum.
At the entrance to the block stands a plastered storehouse (dozō) brought here from inside Matsusaka Castle, where it had served as a rice granary. With the keep, gates, and turrets all long gone, it is the only original castle building left standing anywhere on the site.
Around the Neighborhood
The row houses sit just below the Matsusaka Castle ruins, a short walk through what was once the castle's defensive core. The stone walls survive in good condition, and the grounds, now a park, give a clear sense of the layout the guards were posted to protect. The samurai district of Dōshinmachi lay just east, across the former outer moat.
Matsusaka was also a wealthy merchant town. Two preserved merchant houses nearby, the former Hasegawa Jirobē residence and the former Ozu Seizaemon residence, show the other side of the city's Edo-period society. The shrine to Motoori Norinaga, a Matsusaka native and one of the most influential scholars of the period, stands close by as well. Anyone arriving at mealtime should know that Matsusaka is famous across Japan for its beef.
The block is about a 15-minute walk from Matsusaka Station, served by both JR and Kintetsu lines, or roughly 10 minutes by car from the Matsusaka interchange on the Ise Expressway. Municipal parking is a few minutes away on foot.
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- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Former Matsusaka Castle Guard House
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Q&A
- Can I go inside the houses?
- One unit, at the northern end of the west row, is open free of charge from 10:00 to 16:00. It is closed on Mondays (or the following day when Monday is a public holiday) and over the New Year period. The remaining units are occupied private homes and cannot be entered.
- Do people really still live here?
- Yes. Most of the nineteen surviving units are lived in, including by descendants of the original guard families. The buildings are owned and managed by Byōshūsha, a company that grew out of a mutual-aid society the former samurai formed after 1868.
- How long does a visit take?
- Seeing the lane and the open unit takes about 30 to 45 minutes. Combined with the castle ruins and one of the merchant houses, it makes a comfortable half-day.
- Is photography allowed?
- Yes, including inside the open unit. Because the lane is lined with occupied homes, please be considerate of the residents and their privacy when taking pictures.
- When is the best time to come?
- Morning light suits the lane best. Any clear day works, and apart from the weekly Monday closure there is no seasonal restriction on access.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Matsusaka Gojōban Nagaya (旧松坂御城番長屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1384 Tonomachi, Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (building); designated December 10, 2004 |
| Count | Two buildings (east and west rows) and the residential plots |
| Date of construction | 1863 (Bunkyū 3), late Edo period |
| Structure | East row 90.9 m long and 9.4 m deep, west row 83.6 m long; single-story, gabled, pantile roofs, with service wings to the rear |
| Owner | Byōshūsha (a company descended from a former samurai mutual-aid society) |
| Open to the public | North end unit of the west row, free; 10:00–16:00, closed Mondays and New Year |
| Access | About 15 minutes on foot from Matsusaka Station (JR / Kintetsu) |
References
- Database of National Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/00003891
- Gojōban Yashiki, City of Matsusaka official website
- https://www.city.matsusaka.mie.jp/site/kanko/gojyobanyashiki.html
- Gojōban Yashiki, Matsusaka Tourism Association
- https://www.matsusaka-kanko.com/information/information/gojyouban/
- Gojōban Yashiki, Matsusaka Tourism Information Site
- https://matsusaka-info.jp/spots/detail/post-9.html
Last verified: 2026.06.03