Akagi Family Residence (Tsuno Town, Koyu District, Miyazaki Prefecture)

A Merchant House That Also Lodged Daimyo

The Akagi Family Residence (赤木家住宅, Akagi-ke Jūtaku) is a late Edo-period merchant house on the old Bungo Kaidō highway in Tsuno Town, Miyazaki Prefecture, whose main house was completed in 1844 and which was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2004.

The designation covers three buildings, the main house, a storehouse and a barn, together with the residential lot they stand on. A house-divination plan drawn in 1861 is included as an attached item. In the national register it appears as Akagi Family Residence (Tsuno Town, Koyu District, Miyazaki Prefecture).

Tsuno sits roughly halfway between the castle town of Takanabe and the domain's port at Mimitsu, and under Takanabe rule it grew into a country market town along the highway. The Akagi were settled on the west side of the road by the late 18th century. They traded under the shop name Yorozuya and built their wealth largely on forestry.

Today the property occupies a long east–west plot facing the street. The main house stands back behind a front garden, with the storehouse and barn deeper in the lot, a well near the middle and a small shrine to the household deity in the northwest corner. The town gives the area of the lot as 1,790.42 square meters.

Why the Akagi Family Residence Is an Important Cultural Property

In 1837 the Takanabe domain licensed the Akagi house to serve as a Honjin, an official inn for daimyo and shogunate officials traveling the highway. Before that, such guests in Tsuno had been lodged at the domain's own rest house across the road. The family added a middle gate and plastered walls to meet the new role.

Fire spread to the property in the sixth month of 1844. Rebuilding began in the tenth month, and by the end of that year the main house had been raised again on its former plan. That is the building standing today. The honjin role continued afterward: Shimazu Hisamitsu of Satsuma stayed here in 1863 and again in 1864, and wooden placards from those visits survive.

The Akagi Family Residence was designated an Important Cultural Property on December 10, 2004. The Agency for Cultural Affairs cites it under the criterion for works outstanding in regional character, and its explanation points to three things: a reception suite with formal Zashiki-kazari alcove fittings, a consistently high standard of carpentry, and the way a single house combined a merchant's home with honjin duties on the Bungo Kaidō. The stone walls around the lot and the outbuildings are credited with preserving the layout of a late Edo compound.

Tsuno Town adds a further point. Licensed honjin were usually built as a separate wing on the merchant's land, but at the Akagi Family Residence the rooms for high-ranking samurai and the family's living quarters share one building. The town describes this as rare and reads it as a sign of the close trust between the Akizuki lords of Takanabe and the Akagi household.

What to Look For at the Akagi Family Residence

The main house

The main house measures 13.5 m by 14.2 m under a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof of Sangawara-buki pantiles, entered on the long side (Hirairi) and wrapped on all four sides by Hisashi eaves. A hipped wing, the Tsunoya, projects from the south end of the west face, and a second gabled wing of 7.4 m by 5.9 m runs out to the north with a bath and toilet at its end. The south gable wall is finished in clapboard held by notched battens.

Inside, the southern end is the Doma earthen-floored work area and the north is raised floor. The best room, the Okuzashiki, has a Tokonoma, shelves and a built-in writing desk (Tsukeshoin) along its north side, verandas on both the garden and courtyard sides, and its own bath and toilet for guests. Look up at the partition between the Okuzashiki and the adjoining Hikae-no-ma: the carved board Ranma shows cranes over breaking waves.

The plan kept guests and household firmly apart. A shelf and passage two shaku wide separated the reception rooms from the shop room, and a clay wall once closed off the inner storeroom, the nando. Most later changes are inserted partitions and replaced parts around the entrance, so the plan, frame and Wagoya roof structure remain close to the 1844 form.

The storehouse and barn

The two-story storehouse is 13.1 m by 7.9 m with its ridge running east to west. Its outer walls are sheathed in horizontal boards over an exposed-post frame, and the roof rests on Nobori-bari sloping beams laid with split-bamboo matting. Inside it was divided in three: household utensils to the east, grain in the middle and timber to the west. On the roofing there is a small inconsistency in the national database: the detailed commentary and the town describe Hongawarabuki round-and-flat tiles with a pantiled lean-to on the south, while the building's own data field lists pantiles.

The barn is a single-story gabled building of 7.6 m by 4.4 m, one earthen-floored room inside. What sets the Akagi Family Residence barn apart is the tall base of stacked stone under its board walls. Heavy Ishigaki stone walls also line the north and west edges of the lot.

The 1861 house-divination plan was drawn by a practitioner named Honda Kazuma. Comparing it with the site shows that some buildings and outer features went after the Meiji era, but the size of the lot, the position and scale of the main house, the well and the shrine have not moved.

Visiting the Akagi Family Residence

A conservation repair of the main house and the two outbuildings, carried out by Tsuno Town, was completed in June 2024. As of September 2026 we could not find a regular opening schedule for the Akagi Family Residence in the town's published information. The interior has been opened only on occasions arranged by the town, and in December 2024 the town told its council that parking for future public openings is planned on a vacant lot nearby. Check with the Social Education Division of Tsuno Town before you travel.

Outside an opening day, visitors can only look from the street. The house fronts the former National Route 10, which follows the line of the old Bungo Kaidō through the town center. It is still a family property, so please stay on public ground and keep noise down. Photography rules for any interior opening are set by the town on the day.

The nearest station is Tsuno on the JR Nippō Line. The Akagi Family Residence lies about 1.2 km west-northwest of the station in a straight line, roughly a 20-minute walk. Tsuno Town Hall is a short walk to the south.