Kawase Family Residence Main House

About the Kawase Family Residence Main House

The Kawase Family Residence Main House (河瀬家住宅主屋, Kawase-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a former samurai dwelling built in 1856 in Tamoncho, Nara City, Nara Prefecture, and was entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 27, 2006. It is a tile-roofed timber house, mostly single-story with a partial 2nd floor, covering 203 square meters.

The house faces south under a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof whose ridge runs east to west. A covered passage links it to the storehouse on the north, and the late Edo earthen wall runs along its south front. The Agency for Cultural Affairs also lists a wicket gate and a wall as attachments of the main house.

Two Halves, Two Eras

The Kawase main house was not built all at once. Its east half, the earth-floored Doma and the raised rooms beside it, is the original 1856 fabric.

The west half is later. Its Zashiki reception rooms and Chashitsu tearoom, together with a gabled reception room projecting from the south front, were added in 1942. The family kept the late Edo dwelling on the east side and grew rooms for guests to the west and south.

Look for that reception room: a distinctly modern space, attached to the old house as its own gabled wing.

Sukiya Touches and Reused Timber

From the outside the Kawase Family Residence Main House keeps the look of a traditional home, yet parts of it borrow the lighter, tea-house manner of Sukiya-zukuri. With a tearoom among the new rooms, the 1942 work suggests a household that wanted a place for tea at home.

What the Agency singles out is the skill with which old building parts were worked into the extension. Around the same year the Kawase household moved its front gate from Yakushi-in, a former sub-temple of Tōdai-ji, and the same habit of giving salvaged timber a second life shows in the main house. The Agency does not say which members came from where.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Kawase Family Residence Main House was registered as a structure that would be hard to reproduce. Of the five Kawase registrations, it is the only one listed under that criterion.

In one building, an 1856 samurai house and a 1942 sukiya-style extension built partly from older timbers overlap. A copy could reproduce the shapes, but not the history of the reused members or the craft that joined old to new, and that layering is what the criterion appears to recognize.

Seeing the Kawase Main House

The Kawase main house stands within a private compound, and its interior is not open to the public (checked September 2026). Because it lies behind the south earthen wall, only a limited view is possible from the lane. There is no official guidance on photography; if you take pictures from outside, respect the household's privacy. Directions to the estate are on the Kawase Family Residence page.