Kitamura Family Residence (Nagano City)

Kitamura Family Residence

The Kitamura Family Residence (北村家住宅, Kitamura-ke Jūtaku) is the homestead of a landowning family in the former Kawada-juku post town at Wakaho Kawada, Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture; its main house of 1887 and its gate and former post office building of the mid-Meiji era were registered as three Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 2, 2004 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The three carry consecutive registration numbers, 20-0172 (main house), 20-0173 (gate) and 20-0174 (post office building). On May 1, 2008, Nagano City named the property, as the Kitamura Residence, Landscape Important Building No. 5.

Other registered properties elsewhere in Japan share the name Kitamura Family Residence, so this site adds the city name: Kitamura Family Residence (Nagano City).

Kawada-juku and the Kitamura Family

Kawada-juku was a post town on the Matsushiro road, a branch of the Hokkoku Kaido highway also known as the Tani Kaido. Matsudaira Tadateru, then lord of the area, established it in 1611 (Nagano City). Lying between Matsushiro and Fukushima-juku, it filled with travellers whenever floods closed the Sai River crossings, earning the nickname "the rainy-day post town".

After a great flood the town was moved to its present site in 1739, taking the shape of a street that bends twice in a squared U. A water channel ran down the middle of the main street, and the honjin inn for lords and the official notice board stood midway along its north side (Nagano City).

According to Nagano City, the Kitamura family were landowners in old Kawada-juku, and their homestead stands diagonally across the street from the Nishizawa house, the former honjin. The city guidebook adds that the family keeps many old documents that have yet to be read.

During the annual Gion festival of Machikawada Shrine, held from July 16 to 23, a temporary shrine for the deity is set up on the first day on the main street in front of the Kitamura Family Residence (Nagano City).

How the Three Buildings Fit Together

The three buildings of the Kitamura Family Residence line up along the old street. On the north side of the plot, facing the road, stands the storehouse-built gate, and adjoining it on the west is the former post office building, also of storehouse construction. The main house stands behind them, its front turned north toward the street (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Nagano City treats the gate and the post office building together as a row gate formed of two linked storehouses, whose earth-plastered walls over black clapboard skirting keep the look of the old highway. The post office building housed a post office from the mid-Taisho era until about 1939 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Each building is described on its own page.

Visiting

The Kitamura Family Residence is a private home, and no official information on access to the grounds or interiors was found; visitors can view the exterior from the street. Nagano City counts the street of the former Kawada-juku among its Hundred Views of Nagano.

The Nagano Electric Railway Yashiro Line, which served the area, closed in 2012 together with Shinano-Kawada Station (Nagano City). Since April 1 that year, the Nagaden Bus Yashiro-Suzaka route has replaced it between Suzaka and Yashiro stations via Matsushiro (Chikuma City). The site of Shinano-Kawada Station is about 400 metres in a straight line from the Kitamura Family Residence.