Former Oana Family Residence

Former Oana Family Residence

The Former Oana Family Residence (旧小穴家住宅, Kyū Oana-ke Jūtaku) is a modern house of the late Taisho era (1919 to 1926) in Kitafukashi 1-chome, Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, whose main house, book storehouse and annex were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 31, 2022 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The family name is read Oana, not Koana.

The main house and the book storehouse date from the late Taisho era and the annex from 1936; the three carry consecutive registration numbers, 20-0612 to 20-0614 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Recommending them in July 2022, the Council for Cultural Affairs treated the buildings as one well-made house that records how a modern residential district grew up in the old castle town.

A Residential Quarter North of Matsumoto Castle

Matsumoto City explains that Kitafukashi, the district around the Former Oana Family Residence, was opened up as housing land after the Meiji Restoration, when retainers of the domain who had been posted in Edo came home. For years many plots along the street stood empty, and rice paddies spread beyond the elementary school across the road to the west.

The houses filled in during the early Showa era, many of them second homes of merchants or homes of writers and artists. A church, houses and a community hall now stand on the old school site.

Owners Over a Century

The Former Oana Family Residence passed from its builder, a Mr. Shimizu, to the lawyer Oana Kiichi in the early Showa era, to the confectionery wholesaler Saruta in 1954 and to its present owner in 2021 (Matsumoto City). The Shimizu family were merchants in the brewing trade in Isemachi; the city thinks the builder was Shimizu Kisaburo, a rice, fertiliser and miso dealer trading as Shioya in a national business directory of 1919.

Oana Kiichi was a well-known lawyer in the Matsumoto basin and a calligrapher with his own art name, and in 1914 he led some twenty local enthusiasts in founding a calligraphy study circle (Matsumoto City). In 1936 he added the annex at the back of the plot as a place to convalesce. The present owner's law office notes that Oana served as the first president of the Nagano Bar Association after the war, and dates his years in the house from 1927 to 1953.

Saruta ran the confectionery wholesaler of the same name. Around 1960, when the business began selling ice cream, he moved the book storehouse south to make room for an office on the property (Matsumoto City). Fans of modern architecture knew the place as the Saruta residence, according to the owner's law office. Once it stood empty, local architects who feared its demolition introduced it to the present owner, who wanted to keep and use it (Matsumoto City).

How the Three Buildings Sit

At the Former Oana Family Residence, the single-storey main house has its entrance porch on the west, the two-storey book storehouse adjoins it on the east, and the single-storey annex stands south-east of the main house at the back of the plot (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Matsumoto City). All three have gabled roofs of Japanese tile, and the walls of the annex follow the finishes of the main house (Matsumoto City). Each building is described on its own page.

Visiting

The Former Oana Family Residence is privately owned. In a notice of July 2022, the owner's law office said it uses the buildings for storage, archives and other office support, and does not accept general visitors. Please stay off the property and look at the exterior from the street.

The house lies north-east of Matsumoto Castle, about 420 metres in a straight line from the main keep. Kita-Matsumoto Station on the JR Oito Line, the nearest station, is about 1.1 km away in a straight line, and Matsumoto Station about 1.4 km (calculated from map coordinates).