Watanabe Family Residence

A Merchant Compound Known as Kyoya

The Watanabe Family Residence (渡邊家住宅, Watanabe-ke Jūtaku) is a merchant's compound in Aburatsu, Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, whose late-Edo main house and three Meiji-era storehouses were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 27, 2006. The four buildings carry registration numbers 45-0037 (main house), 45-0038 (sake storehouse), 45-0039 (west storehouse) and 45-0040 (small storehouse), all listed for their contribution to the historic landscape of the nation.

The family behind them was one of the big names of the port. Nichinan City's heritage plan records that the Watanabe, known in the Shimomachi quarter of Aburatsu by the trade name Kyoya, built up a shipping-agency business from 1834, handling cargo for the coastal vessels that called here. In 1908 Watanabe Yoshichi (渡邊与七) took over the Aburatsu passenger and freight agency of Osaka Shosen, the steamship line that tied the harbour to the Kansai region. Ships came only every few days, the plan notes, so traders waiting for a berth stayed over, and inns and shops spread along the canal to serve them.

Timber made Aburatsu. In the Edo period the port shipped Obi cedar (飫肥杉, obisugi), the prized product of the Obi domain, toward Osaka, and the Horikawa Canal, completed in 1686, carried the logs down to the harbour. The old town grew up on the canal's east side, and the Watanabe Family Residence stands within it. A local shochu distiller, Kyoya Shuzo, which is said to date from 1834, still trades under the same Kyoya name.

How the Four Buildings Sit on the Lot

The Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions are enough to sketch the plan. The main house, a single-storey timber building under a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of Sangawara-buki pan tiles, runs along the northern edge of the lot, right on the street. The storehouses sit behind it to the south: the sake storehouse southeast of the main house, the small storehouse directly behind the main house and side by side with the sake storehouse, and the west storehouse in the southwest corner. All three are single-storey Dozo-zukuri buildings with thick earthen walls, roofed with the same tiled gables as the house.

Each had its own job. The sake storehouse marks a period when the household made its living from brewing; the west storehouse held furniture and removable fittings such as sliding doors; the small storehouse held firewood and similar supplies. Read from the street inward, the business faces the road and the household's reserves sit at the back.

In floor area the main house covers 144 square metres, the west storehouse 72 square metres, the sake storehouse 67 square metres and the small storehouse 33 square metres, so the smallest of the three storehouses is less than half the size of the largest.

Part of Aburatsu's Registered Townscape

The same registration round on March 27, 2006 also added an old inn with five buildings, a bookshop and a former doctor's clinic in the neighbouring blocks of Aburatsu. The town's registered buildings cluster around the Horikawa Canal.

Nichinan City's Aburatsu heritage plan, adopted in March 2024, names the Watanabe Family Residence among the places that speak for the Edo period, when Aburatsu was the shipping port for Obi cedar. The same plan also lists the residence as a filming location for the NHK morning drama Wakaba.

Visiting and Getting There

The Watanabe Family Residence is privately owned, and the city's plan lists its interiors as closed to the public. None of the four buildings can be entered, and there are no opening days or admission fees; what you can see is the exterior from the surrounding streets. Only the main house stands on the street line. The three storehouses are at the back of the lot, south of the house, so views of them from public roads are limited.

Keep photography to what is visible from the public road. This is a working household, so do not linger in front of the entrance or block anyone coming and going.

The nearest station is Aburatsu on the JR Nichinan Line. The residence lies about 1 kilometre southeast of the station, roughly a 15-minute walk. Trains from Miyazaki Station to Aburatsu take about 90 minutes, and Miyazaki Kotsu buses leave from the Aburatsu waiting room in front of the station for Miyazaki Station and Obi.