Watanabe Family Residence Main House

What the Watanabe Family Residence Main House Is

The Watanabe Family Residence Main House (渡邊家住宅主屋, Watanabe-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late-Edo merchant's house in Aburatsu, Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 27, 2006 (registration number 45-0037). The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the late Edo period, between 1830 and 1867, and notes additions made in the early Showa era, from 1926 onward.

It stands at the northern edge of the property, directly on the street: a single-storey timber building 9 bays long and 4 and a half bays deep, the bay (ken) being the traditional module of Japanese carpentry. A kitchen wing projects at the rear, bringing the building area to 144 square metres, and the roof is a plain Kirizuma-zukuri gable laid with Sangawara-buki pan tiles. Of the four registered buildings on the lot, this is the only one that meets the road; the sake, west and small storehouses are tucked behind it to the south.

The Watanabe were among Aburatsu's leading merchants. Nichinan City records that the family, known locally by the trade name Kyoya, grew as shipping agents from 1834, and the main house was the building they turned toward the street and their customers.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency's citation is brief. The Watanabe Family Residence Main House keeps the exterior of a late-Edo merchant house in Aburatsu, and it was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

The Showa-era additions went mostly to the back, around the kitchen, and left the street front in its Edo form. Nichinan City's heritage plan counts the Watanabe Family Residence among the places that recall Edo-period Aburatsu, when the town was the shipping port for Obi cedar, and the main house is the part of the property that carries that story most directly.

What to Look For

Start with the frontage, which is unusually wide. There is a single entrance at the east end; the rest of the facade is filled with koshi lattice windows, runs of slender vertical slats that screen the rooms from passers-by while letting in light and air. On the Watanabe house they continue along the street for most of the building's length.

Walk around to the west side and the character changes. That wall is finished in Shikkui lime plaster, smooth and white, a closed surface set against the open rhythm of the lattice.

From across the road, compare the one doorway at the east end with the long stretch of lattice running west. The 9-bay length reads more clearly that way than any figure on paper. Above, the gable ends face east and west, and the tiles step down in neat rows to the eaves.

Visiting the Main House

The Watanabe Family Residence Main House is a private home, and its interior is not open to visitors. You can see it only from the street, but because it is the one building on the property built right on the road line, the lattice front, the entrance and the plastered west wall are all visible from public ground.

Photograph from the road, keep the doorway clear, and do not step onto the property. Directions to the residence are on the Watanabe Family Residence page.