Hatakoshi Family Residence

A Village Headman's Compound in Hata

The Hatakoshi Family Residence (波多腰家住宅, Hatakoshi-ke Jūtaku) is the compound of a former village headman's family in the Hata district of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, where 11 buildings raised between about 1748 and the early Showa era were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 28 April 2000. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 20-0036 to 20-0046.

The Hatakoshi were an old family of Nakahata, trading under the house name Maruhachi. According to Matsumoto City, they served as shōya, the hereditary village headman, from 1729, and are said to have moved to the present plot in 1748. The property covers about 2,000 tsubo. A belt of trees shelters the west, the north and part of the east side, while the south side runs along a lane behind a fence panelled at its base.

The buildings span close to two centuries. The main house belongs to the mid-18th century and the rice storehouse to 1879. The miso storehouse followed in 1890, the barn and the ash house in the later Meiji era, and the gate and middle gate in the Taisho era. The archive storehouse dates from 1931, the storehouse from 1933, and the front gate and south gate are also from the Showa era. Each generation added what it needed, and the compound absorbed the additions without losing its shape.

Birthplace of the Man Who Dug the Hata Canal

The Hatakoshi Family Residence is best known locally as the birthplace of Hatakoshi Rokuza (1839 to 1900), who built the Hata irrigation canal, the Hata-seki. Rokuza became village headman in 1864. He negotiated with the villages that shared water rights until they agreed, then in 1868 petitioned the Matsumoto domain for permission to dig, and received it.

Matsumoto City records that he poured his own resources into the work and finished a channel of 75 cho 21 ken, about 8.3 kilometres, bringing some 200 cho of new paddy into cultivation. He later served as a district official and a member of the county assembly, and was awarded the Medal with Dark Blue Ribbon.

An ink inscription on a roof timber of the rice storehouse dates its framing to 1879, roughly a decade after the canal was approved. No record ties the two together directly, but a storehouse seven bays long going up so soon afterwards is worth keeping in mind as you look at it.

How the Compound Is Laid Out

The Hatakoshi Family Residence faces west. On the road side stands the front gate, a roofless post-and-lintel kabukimon. Inside it on the left is the ash house. Straight ahead, the main house turns its gable end toward the visitor, with a Shikidai formal step and the great main door set into that west face. From the front of the main house, at the point where the formal entrance meets the best reception rooms, a fence with the middle gate runs forward, dividing the forecourt from the garden of the reception rooms.

North of the main house, the storehouses form a single east to west row: the miso storehouse on the western corner, then the rice storehouse, the barn and the storehouse. The ash house meets the miso storehouse at a right angle. A fence with the gate separates the forecourt from this working yard. Behind the main house, across an inner courtyard, the archive storehouse faces west, and near the eastern end of the south fence the south gate serves as the everyday entrance.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the compound preserves the arrangement drawn on a kaso-zu of 1931, a house plan that sets out the buildings against the auspicious and inauspicious directions. The ability to lay a plan from more than 90 years ago over the present site is part of what makes this compound valuable as a record.

The listing criteria vary by building. The main house was registered as a model of architectural form, the rice storehouse and the archive storehouse as buildings that would be difficult to reproduce, and the other eight as contributions to the historic landscape. Matsumoto City singles out how well the compound as a whole and its surroundings have been kept, and in 2017 the city also designated the main house as a municipal Tangible Cultural Property.

Visiting the Hatakoshi Family Residence

This is a private home, and none of the interiors are open. Neither Matsumoto City nor the Agency for Cultural Affairs publishes open days or a visiting procedure (checked September 2026). Please stay off the property and view the buildings from the road. Take photographs only from the road, and keep the household's daily life out of the frame. For questions about access, the Matsumoto City Cultural Properties Division is the contact, and its page on the residence lists the Azumi office (tel. 0263-94-2304).

The nearest station is Hata on the Alpico Kamikochi Line. Trains bound for Shin-Shimashima take about 25 minutes from Matsumoto Station and run roughly every 40 minutes during the day. The compound lies about 1.4 kilometres south of the station, around 20 minutes on foot. By car it is about 25 minutes from the Matsumoto interchange on the Nagano Expressway. As this is a private house, do not park in front of it.