Hekiunso (Former Kumamoto Family Residence) Main House

The Main House of Hekiunso

The Hekiunso (Former Kumamoto Family Residence) Main House (碧雲荘（旧熊本家住宅）主屋) is the main house of the home built by the businessman Kumamoto Rihei of 1941 in Ishida-nishifure, Ishida-cho, Iki City, Nagasaki Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on October 7, 2014 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Agency records a single-storey timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of 272 square metres; registration number 42-0111.

Rooms around a Courtyard

The Hekiunso main house is a single-storey building under a hip-and-gable roof of interlocking pantiles, set on high ground overlooking the harbour (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The entrance faces east with a reception room beside it. Around a courtyard, a 12 and a half mat main reception room edged with a tatami-floored corridor and an 8-mat room in the sukiya style lie to the south, with the family entrance and service rooms to the north.

Nagasaki Prefecture describes corridors running round three sides of the courtyard, with many rooms opening off them, and notes that Western-style rooms are part of the plan. The tatami rooms are finished throughout in a sukiya manner, and the balustrades are fitted with delicate openwork.

The sources differ on the reception room. The Agency describes the one beside the entrance as Japanese in design. Nagasaki Prefecture instead places a Western-style parlour to the left of the entrance, and says that the Western room on the south side has a parquet floor laid with carpet and shelving set like a bay window, within an interior that mixes Japanese and Western elements on a Japanese base.

Why It Was Registered

The Agency singles out the quality of both materials and workmanship, and the generous Tokonoma alcove of the main room, as large as three daime (three-quarter) tatami mats; it registered the house as a model of design. Nagasaki Prefecture describes Hekiunso as a lavish Japanese-style house of the early Showa era that remains in good condition.

What to Look For

If you can get inside, start with the alcove in the main room. At three daime mats it is unusually generous, the space that sets the rank of the room deliberately made large (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The tatami-floored corridor framing the southern rooms and the openwork in the balustrades of the sukiya room show the same care (Nagasaki Prefecture).

From outside, look at how the broad hip-and-gable roof sits low across the hilltop.

Visiting

According to Iki City's answer to the city council in September 2025, the exterior of the Hekiunso main house is open to view, and the interior can be seen by contacting the Ishida branch of the social welfare council, with no application form needed. Part of the house is joined to the Ishida General Welfare Center (Nagasaki Prefecture), so it is best to get in touch before you go. No official information on photography was found.