Agatsuma Family Residence (Zao Town, Katta District, Miyagi Prefecture)

The Agatsuma Family Residence: A Priest's Farmstead Below Mount Aoso

The Agatsuma Family Residence (我妻家住宅, Agatsuma-ke Jūtaku) is a mid-Edo farmstead in Magaritake, Zao Town, Katta District, Miyagi Prefecture, whose main house of 1753 and document storehouse were designated an Important Cultural Property in 1971. Two more storehouses and the residential lot were added later, so the protected estate now covers four buildings plus a granary and front gate listed as Tsuketari, or ancillary items.

The name trips up even Japanese readers. The characters are usually read Wagatsuma, but this family says Agatsuma, and the official listing follows them. According to the Zao Town Board of Education, the line began as a warrior house in Agatsuma Hongō in old Kōzuke Province, today's Agatsuma District in Gunma Prefecture. The family acquired land in Magaritake village, moved north, and settled into farming by the end of the Warring States period. Through the Edo period the Agatsuma heads served repeatedly as kimoiri, the village headman, and traded in cotton and safflower.

Locals still call the place the Negi Yashiki, the "priest's house," because the family also served as negi, a rank of Shinto priest, from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. Miyagi Prefecture names the shrine as the Shiratori Myōjin at Miya in Zao Town, better known as Kattamine Shrine, and adds a second nickname: Nijūgo-ken, "the twenty-five ken," after the building's old overall length of 25 ken.

The Agatsuma Family Residence sits at the foot of Mount Aoso inside the Magaritake settlement, with fields spread in front and a belt of homestead woodland behind.

Why the Agatsuma Family Residence Is an Important Cultural Property

The first designation, on December 28, 1971, covered only the main house and the document storehouse. The local tourism association points to two things: the house is unusually large for an Edo-period dwelling, and its storehouses and gate survive around it.

Ink inscriptions later turned up inside the front storehouse and the plank storehouse, fixing their construction dates. On January 26, 1980, both were added to the designation as Important Cultural Property. The same order brought in a granary, the front gate and a single bound volume, the Mannenki, as ancillary items, along with the residential lot itself. The Agency for Cultural Affairs explains that the many outbuildings and the woodland at the back preserve the typical layout of a farmstead in this region, and that the lot was included so the whole compound could be protected as a unit.

That lot measures 3,624.59 square meters and includes the stone walls around the property and in the rear garden, according to the town's repair documents. Most preserved farmhouses in Japan survive as a single building on a cleared plot. At the Agatsuma Family Residence the gate, the walls, the storehouses and the trees all come with it.

One small discrepancy: the Agency's database writes the title of the ancillary volume with the character 蔓, while Zao Town writes it 萬年記 (Mannenki).

What to See at the Agatsuma Family Residence

The Main House

The Agency's database records the main house of the Agatsuma Family Residence as 26.3 meters long and 12.1 meters deep, with a Yosemune-zukuri hipped roof in Kayabuki thatch and a wing on the west side measuring 9.1 meters by 5.3 meters. Miyagi Prefecture gives the full length as 120 shaku, about 36.4 meters, and singles out the large comb-shaped gable set into the front slope of the roof. The house stands on a raised base of fitted stone reached by broad stone steps, and from the south garden the thatch looks almost as tall as the walls beneath it.

Step inside and the Doma, the earth-floored work area, is the first surprise. The town puts it at 39 tsubo, roughly 129 square meters. Miyagi Prefecture notes six round posts shaped with an adze standing on foundation stones in the kitchen area to carry the roof frame. Look up: the beams follow the natural curve of the timber, each piece bent a little differently from its neighbor.

The living quarters were restored in an earlier repair to a three-room plan built around a large central room. At the upper end stands a separate formal reception wing, the Hiroma, restored with half of its front as solid wall and half as Shitomido lattice shutters. Inscriptions found during that work date the main house to 1753 and suggest the Hiroma was added somewhat later.

Save a moment for the ridge. Zao Town's thatching notes say the roof probably began with the turf-covered ridge common on farmhouses in northeastern Japan, and was changed to an enclosed box ridge after 1814. Beneath the box ridge, a layer of cedar sprigs keeps the thatch at the peak from thinning and slipping out. The eaves are trimmed almost level, a finish regarded as typical of this district.

The Storehouses and the Front Gate

Behind the main house of the Agatsuma Family Residence stand the document storehouse, the granary and the plank storehouse. The front storehouse sits beside the gate.

The document storehouse is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri building of earthen walls, 9.1 meters by 5.5 meters, with a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof clad in sheet iron. The Agency dates it broadly to the late Edo period, while the town's repair documents place it around 1753.

The front storehouse, also earth-walled, measures 9.1 meters by 4.6 meters under a roof of tochi-buki wooden shingles. It carries the date 1810, and the Agency's database marks it as relocated. Zao Town's repair documents describe it as an older storehouse moved and rebuilt here, and the town's account says it was put up as a famine-relief granary for Katta District, with the family head of the day, Genzaburō, donating 75 ryō toward it.

The plank storehouse of 1805 is the smallest of the four at 5.5 meters by 2.7 meters. Its walls are timber boards rather than plaster, and it was used to store unhulled rice.

The granary listed as an ancillary item predates 1819, and the front gate is thought to date from the mid-nineteenth century.

Two Earthquakes and a Four-Year Repair

The Fukushima offshore earthquakes of February 13, 2021 and March 16, 2022 each registered upper 6 on the Japanese intensity scale in Zao Town. At the Agatsuma Family Residence, large sections of earthen wall fell away from the storehouses. Disaster repairs, including replastering and straightening posts, ran from November 2021 to June 2025. A separate conservation project that rethatched the main house and repaired its fittings ran from November 2022 to July 2025, and public opening resumed in September 2025. The document storehouse and front storehouse, once again in white Shikkui plaster, show the result most clearly.

Visiting the Agatsuma Family Residence

The Agatsuma Family Residence is still privately owned and opens only on scheduled days: the third Sunday of each month except August, December and January, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (until 3:00 p.m. in February and March). Admission closes 30 minutes before the end. For fiscal 2026 (April 2026 to March 2027), the remaining open days are October 18, November 15, February 21, 2027 and March 21, 2027.

On any other day you cannot enter the grounds, and because the estate is closed off by its gate and walls, there is no way to see the exterior from outside either. Dates can change or be cancelled for local reasons. The town posts updates on its heritage website, Dokitan.com.

No reservation is needed. On an open day, go to the visitor reception in the Magaritake Community Center (3-2 Yakushimae, Magaritake, Zao Town), just south of the house, where volunteer guides lead groups through the grounds. The town's notices do not list an admission fee and say nothing about photography indoors, so ask at reception.

By public transport, take a Miyako route bus to the Magaritake stop, then walk about 5 minutes. Drivers will find parking; the town recommends entering the community center's address into a car navigation system. For inquiries, call the Zao Town cultural properties office on weekdays (0224-33-2328) or the Zao Town Furusato Cultural Hall on weekends and holidays (0224-33-2018).