Kobayakawa Family Residence

What Is the Kobayakawa Family Residence?

The Kobayakawa Family Residence (小早川家住宅, Kobayakawa-ke Jūtaku) is a samurai estate in Jonai 2-chome, Shimabara City, Nagasaki Prefecture, whose late-Edo stone wall, late-Edo gate, 1890 main house and late-Meiji brick wall were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 23 February 2012. Shimabara City owns the property, and locals often call it Kobayakawa-tei, the Kobayakawa house.

Shimabara Castle was begun by the daimyo Matsukura Shigemasa in 1618 and largely complete by about 1625. Its main enclosures ran in a straight line from south to north, with the retainers' quarters spreading beyond them to the north. The Kobayakawa Family Residence stands in that northern zone, in the block where senior retainers of the Shimabara domain lived. It is a different world from the better-known samurai street on the castle's west side, which housed foot soldiers on much smaller plots.

According to the Nagasaki Shimbun, citing the city board of education, the house belonged in 1865 to Sano Yūtarō, a senior official of the domain. It later passed to the Kobayakawa family, whose descendants donated it to Shimabara City in 2015.

The Four Registered Structures

All four parts of the Kobayakawa Family Residence were added to the register in its 72nd round on 23 February 2012, each for contributing to the historic landscape. Figures from the Agency for Cultural Affairs database:

• Main house: built 1890, single-storey timber, hip-and-gable roof in pantiles, building area 194 square meters
• Gate: late Edo period, a one-bay yakuimon gate, 2.6 meters wide and 1.5 meters deep
• Stone wall: late Edo period, about 1.6 meters high and 98.7 meters long in total
• Brick wall: late Meiji period, 1.4 to 1.9 meters high and 32.1 meters long

Only one of the four is a building. The gate and walls are what give the estate its shape, and they come from different eras: the Edo-period gate and stone wall set out the plot, the main house was rebuilt in the Meiji era, and the brick wall was added on the north side when the road there was widened. Read together, the Kobayakawa Family Residence shows a castle-town samurai house turning into a Meiji-era home without ever leaving its original lot.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The main house of the Kobayakawa Family Residence stands in the middle of the plot facing east. The front gate opens on the east side, a little north of center, and lines up with the entrance of the house; a curving stretch of stone wall separates the gate area from the house.

Stone walls enclose the east, south and west sides and the northwest corner, while the north side is brick. The road along the north slopes, and the brick wall steps down in three heights to follow it. To see everything from outside, start at the east gate, walk south and around the west side, and finish on the sloping road to the north. Where the grey and pink Shimabara stone gives way to red brick, you are looking at the seam between the Edo and Meiji periods.

The reception rooms of the house look onto a garden. Water was channeled into it from a spring inside the old third enclosure of the castle to fill a pond and supply the household, an arrangement typical of samurai houses in Shimabara, a town known for its springs. A city official has also pointed out small drops built into the channel so that the water can be heard as it runs.

The ruins of Shimabara Castle became a national Historic Site on 10 March 2025, and the Nagasaki Shimbun reported that the designated area proposed at that time included the Kobayakawa Family Residence.

Visiting and Getting There

The Kobayakawa Family Residence is normally closed and the grounds cannot be entered. Shimabara City sometimes opens it for a limited period: in December 2024 it was open free of charge from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m. Ask the city's Shimabara Tourism Division (0957-63-1111) whether an opening is planned. There is no dedicated parking.

On other days the stone wall, the brick wall and the outside of the gate can all be seen from the surrounding streets. The house itself sits in the middle of the plot and is barely visible from outside.

Nagasaki Prefecture's heritage database gives a walk of about 10 minutes from the Kitamon stop on Shimatetsu buses. From Shimabara Station on the Shimabara Railway the estate lies about 1 kilometer to the northwest in a straight line, roughly a 15-minute walk. The city's reservation-only community bus, Tashiro-go (fare 200 yen), has a stop named Kobayakawa-tei on its route map dated 17 October 2025.