Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House

What Is the Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House?

The Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House (糀屋太郎兵衛商店店舗兼主屋, Kōjiya Tarobē Shōten Tenpo-ken-omoya) is a townhouse built around 1893 in Uomachi, Matsusaka City, Mie Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 4, 2021.

As the name says, it is shop and family home in one: the koji is sold at the front, and the household lives behind. The building is timber, 2 storeys high under a tiled roof, with a building area of 96 square meters, and it faces west onto the street. Of the four registered buildings at Kojiya Tarobei Shoten, this is essentially the only one you can see from the road.

Why the Shop and Main House Was Registered

It was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House as showing what townhouses in the old castle town looked like after the great fire, meaning the Great Matsusaka Fire of March 29, 1893. The house was put back up within the same year.

Mie Prefecture cites it as a good example of the traditional Matsusaka townhouse of the mid-Meiji era. It was renovated around 1970, yet the form of a Meiji house raised on a burned-out plot is still plain to read.

A Black Plaster Front and a Single Row of Rooms

The Street Front

The roof is gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri). A lean-to eave (Geya) runs along the front, and a short wing wall stands at each end. The walls are finished in black Shikkui plaster rather than the white you might expect, and that dark face is the first thing you notice.

On the ground floor a projecting lattice (Degōshi) screens the shop room. Upstairs, a bay window sits beside Mushiko-mado, narrow openings with slats worked into the plaster wall. The pairing of the two kinds of window on one front is worth a close look.

Inside the Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House

According to the agency, the south side of the interior is an earthen-floored passage (Doma) and the north side holds four rooms in a single row. Mie Prefecture mentions a mise, the room where customers are served, and a daidoko, the family room, fitted with a built-in Buddhist altar and a Shinto shelf. Trade at the street end and daily life further in: the basic order of a townhouse survives here in its Matsusaka form.

Seeing the Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House

The Kojiya Tarobei Shoten Shop and Main House is privately owned and still works as a koji shop. You can look at the front from the street at any time. Because it faces west, the black plaster and the lattice catch the light in the afternoon.

The shop room is a place of business: when the shop is open you may step in as a customer, but the living rooms are private. There is no admission desk or fee. Ask the staff before taking photos inside. We could not find published opening hours (checked September 2026). Directions from the station are on the Kojiya Tarobei Shoten page.