Katakura Family Residence

What Is the Katakura Family Residence?

The Katakura Family Residence (片倉家住宅, Katakura-ke Jūtaku) is the homestead of the Katakura family in Kawagishikami, Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture; its thatched main house from the mid-18th century and four storehouses built between the early Meiji and early Showa periods, five structures in all, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 8 July 1999. The owner is Katakura Industries Co., Ltd.

The homestead lies in the Kawagishi district, close to the point where the Tenryu River leaves Lake Suwa and runs out through Okaya. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database notes that the main house is also known as the home of Katakura Kanetarō, a leading figure in Japan's machine silk-reeling industry.

Silk reeling, the unwinding of cocoons into raw silk thread, was one of Japan's largest export industries from the late 19th century into the 1930s, and the Suwa basin around Okaya was one of its main centers. The Katakura Family Residence is where one of the biggest firms in that trade began.

From a Hand-Reeling Shed to Katakura-gumi

Katakura Industries dates its founding to 1873, when Katakura Ichisuke began hand-reeling silk with ten zaguri reels in Kawagishi village, Suwa District, now part of Okaya. The Okaya tourism association adds that he set up the reels in a small shed in the front yard of the family home.

His eldest son, the first Katakura Kanetarō, opened the Kaito mill in 1878, a Western-style mechanized reeling plant in the same village. The family firm was organized as Katakura-gumi in 1895, became Katakura Silk Reeling and Spinning Co. in 1920, and took the name Katakura Industries in 1943. That company still owns the Katakura Family Residence.

The audio guide of the Nagano Prefectural Museum of History explains that Katakura-gumi opened mills outside Nagano and in Korea during the Taisho era and grew into the world's largest silk-reeling company. The second Katakura Kanetarō came to be called the "Silk Emperor."

Five Registrations

All five Katakura Family Residence buildings were entered in the national register in the same round, the 18th, on 8 July 1999. They carry consecutive registration numbers, 20-0014 through 20-0018, and share one criterion: each contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The agency's database gives these dates and sizes:

• Main House: mid-18th century, single-storey timber building, thatched roof, 215 square meters in plan
• West Storehouse: early Meiji, two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse, metal sheet roof, 25 square meters
• Miso Storehouse: early Meiji, two-storey storehouse, metal sheet roof, 19 square meters
• South Storehouse: early Meiji, two-storey storehouse, metal sheet roof, 29 square meters
• Document Storehouse: early Showa, three-storey storehouse, iron sheet roof, 65 square meters

The records disagree on the roofs of the three early Meiji storehouses. The structure field of the database lists metal sheet, while the database's own descriptions and the list of cultural properties compiled by Okaya City in 2009 describe a detached Okiyane roof laid with teppeiseki stone slabs.

How the Homestead Is Laid Out

Following the agency's descriptions, the Main House stands at the center of the Katakura Family Residence. Three storehouses line up on its west side, from north to south the West Storehouse, the Miso Storehouse and the South Storehouse. All three are 2.5 ken deep and differ only in width. The Miso Storehouse seems to have been the last of the three, and it shares one roof with the West Storehouse. The South Storehouse turns slightly to follow a bend in the lane.

The Document Storehouse stands apart from that row, on the road edge at the southeast corner of the lot. At three storeys it is the largest storehouse on the property.

The early Meiji storehouses each held something different: household goods, everyday tableware, miso. The later Document Storehouse served as a rice store, among other uses. The number of storehouses, and how the family divided its stores among them, gives a sense of the scale of the farming household.

The former Katakura-gumi office (Chuo Printing Company Building, also a Registered Tangible Cultural Property) stands about 140 meters east of the Katakura Family Residence. It was built in 1910 inside the grounds of the Kaito mill, so the family home and the company's base were only a few minutes' walk apart.

Visiting and Getting There

The Katakura Family Residence belongs to Katakura Industries and is not open to the public. Visitors cannot enter the grounds or see inside the buildings, and we found no announcement of public openings from the owner, Okaya City or the Okaya tourism association.

What can be seen from outside are the buildings facing the road. The Document Storehouse on the southeast road edge and the South Storehouse along the bending lane can both be viewed from the public street. Please take photographs from the road and do not step onto the property.

The nearest station is Okaya on the JR Chuo Line. The Katakura Family Residence is about 1.5 kilometers away on foot, a walk of roughly 20 minutes west-southwest through town toward the outflow of the Tenryu River, into Kawagishikami 1-chome.