Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Household Shrine

What the Household Shrine Is

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Household Shrine is a small shrine at the northern end of the western edge of the estate at Imai in Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture; the present building was rebuilt in the early Showa era and became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 14 October 1999.

It faces south from a stone-faced platform, one bay square, with a Kōhai canopy over the front. The roof is hipped-and-gabled, in Irimoya-zukuri, at the front and plainly gabled at the back, covered in sheet iron. The building area is 1.1 square metres.

A yashikigami is a deity enshrined by a single household within its own grounds. In many parts of Japan a family kept such a shrine quite apart from the tutelary shrine of the village, and this one belongs to that practice.

Why It Was Registered

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Household Shrine was listed as contributing to the historic landscape, recognised as one of the significant components of the estate.

At 1.1 square metres it is among the smallest buildings here. That it was registered at all follows from treating the estate not as a collection of structures but as a place where a household lived. The house and the gates carry the public face, the storehouses and sheds carry the work, and this shrine carries the family's observance.

What to Look For

The roof changes form front to back. The front is hipped-and-gabled while the rear is a plain gable, so the face that is seen keeps its rank and the side that is not stays simple. On a building this small, that is a clear decision about where effort was worth spending.

Find the canopy over the front. Extending the roof forward to shelter the place of worship is one of the marks of a proper shrine building, and Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Household Shrine keeps that convention despite measuring one bay in each direction.

The stone platform matters too. Lifting the shrine clear of the ground keeps damp away and sets the spot apart from ordinary space. Its position at the northern end of the western edge places it a little aside from the daily traffic of the house.

Visiting

Imai Family Residence (Imai Okoyasumi Honjin) Household Shrine stands at the north of the western edge, behind the main house and well to the west as seen from the old Nakasendo. At 1.1 square metres it is hard to pick out from the road at all.

The estate is a private residence; the grounds cannot be entered and the shrine cannot be approached for worship. Photograph from the road. The cultural properties staff of the Okaya City Board of Education can answer questions about access. (Checked in September 2026.)