A Townhouse Dated to 1607
The Kuriyama Family Residence (栗山家住宅, Kuriyama-ke Jūtaku) in Gojo 1-chome, Gojo City, Nara Prefecture, is a merchant townhouse built in 1607 (Keichō 12) and designated an Important Cultural Property on 25 April 1968. That date is not an estimate. A ridge tablet, or munafuda, carrying the Keichō 12 inscription survives with the building and is covered by the designation as an attached item.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the frontage at 16.9 metres and the depth at 13.1 metres. The roof is irimoya-zukuri, a form that sets a gabled upper section over hipped slopes, and it is laid in hongawara-buki, the formal method that alternates broad concave pan tiles with narrow convex cover tiles. A canopy roof, or hisashi, runs along the street front, and part of the interior rises to a second storey.
Stand on the far side of the road and the roof is what holds your attention. The ridge runs long, the tiled slopes lift into a shallow curve at the eaves, and the whole mass settles above a plastered wall. Nothing about the building reads as a farmhouse. It was put up for a family with money and standing, in a town that handled goods moving between Yamato, Kii and Ise.
How the Date Was Established
The building's age went unrecognised for centuries. In 1958 a survey led by the architectural historian Asano Kiyoshi examined the house and located the munafuda, and the Keichō 12 inscription made this the oldest dwelling in Japan for which a construction year can be documented. Older houses survive elsewhere, but their dating rests on stylistic judgement rather than a written record.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs summary is short. It notes that the circumstances of the building's construction remain unclear, that the 1607 ridge tablet is present, and that the house is therefore the earliest dwelling of documented date. It adds that both the exterior and the internal structure convey considerable scale, and that the building holds value as a surviving example of a high-status urban house.
The plan is a mutsuma-dori: six rooms in two rows of three, with a wide earthen-floored doma occupying roughly four tenths of the total area. Later owners opened up partitions, added eaves front and back, and fitted the innermost upper room with a tokonoma alcove, staggered shelves and a shoin writing bay. Strip those alterations away and the three rooms on the upper side become closed, wall-heavy spaces with a post at every bay.
The framing is where specialists slow down. Two ushibari, heavy longitudinal beams, run the length of the building; two-bay tie beams cross above them; a wa-goya truss sits over the whole. Along the doma the posts are omitted and the load travels through beams alone, while sashigamoi lintels cut with tsukidome stopped grooves lock the room block together. This is the skeleton that Edo-period townhouses would rely on for the next two centuries, appearing here at the very start of the seventeenth century.
One date sits usefully beside another. Matsukura Shigemasa laid out Shinmachi in 1608 as the castle town of Futami Castle. The Kuriyama house went up the year before, on the Gojo side of the district, where a town had already formed around Goryo Shrine during the medieval period.
What You Can Actually See
The interior is closed. The house is privately owned, registered to Kanehisa Shoji Co., Ltd., and it is not operated as a museum. There are no opening hours, no admission charge and no reception desk. What visitors get is the exterior, viewed from the public street, at any hour and at no cost.
That is less of a limitation than it sounds. The building stands at the eastern approach to Shinmachi-dōri, near the Shinmachiguchi junction on National Route 168, and the frontage is generous enough to read the roof, the wall treatment and the proportion of the second-storey section from across the road. Photography from the street is unrestricted, though people live here and quiet behaviour is expected.
From Gojo Station on the JR Wakayama Line the walk takes a little over ten minutes, heading south-west towards the Yoshino River.
The house anchors one end of the Gojo Shinmachi Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, selected on 24 December 2010 as the eighty-eighth such district in Japan. It covers about seven hectares along roughly 750 metres of street. Of the 330 buildings inside the boundary, 143 have been identified as traditional structures. Walk west and the second-storey walls grow taller as the buildings get later: low tsushi lofts on the Edo houses, full upper floors from the Meiji period onward, many with their posts plastered over in the ōkabe technique.
Two free stops make useful bases. Machinami Denshōkan, a Meiji-to-Taishō house converted in 2004, sits near the middle of the street and distributes detailed walking maps. Machiya-kan preserves an Edo townhouse with its well, kamado stove and box staircase intact.
A caution about names. Naka-tei, built in 1704, is designated by Nara Prefecture. Kuriyama-tei, which holds a ridge tablet of 1696, is designated by Gojo City. Neither is the Important Cultural Property described here, and travel listings sometimes merge the two Kuriyama buildings into a single entry.
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Q&A
- Can visitors go inside the Kuriyama Family Residence in Gojo City?
- No. The house remains in private ownership and the interior is closed to the public. Visitors view the exterior from the street in front, which is possible at any time.
- Is the Kuriyama Family Residence really the oldest house in Japan?
- It is the oldest dwelling whose construction year can be proved from a document. The 1607 ridge tablet supplies that proof. Several other houses may well be older, but their dates come from stylistic analysis rather than a written record, so the claim is a precise one rather than a loose superlative.
- What does it cost to see the Kuriyama Family Residence, and when is it open?
- There is no charge and no schedule. Because the building is seen from a public road, you can come at any hour. Morning and late-afternoon light rake across the tiled roof and show its curve most clearly.
- How do I reach the Kuriyama Family Residence from the nearest station?
- Gojo Station on the JR Wakayama Line is the closest stop, a walk of roughly ten to fifteen minutes south-west. The house stands near the Shinmachiguchi junction on National Route 168, at the eastern end of Shinmachi-dōri.
- Is photography allowed at the Kuriyama Family Residence?
- Photographing the exterior from the public street is not restricted. The building is a private home, so avoid entering the grounds, pointing a lens through openings, or using drones.
Basic Information
| Name | Kuriyama Family Residence (栗山家住宅, Gojo, Gojo City, Nara Prefecture) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1-2-8 Gojo, Gojo City, Nara Prefecture |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (Building); designation number 01692 |
| Year Designated | 25 April 1968 (Shōwa 43) |
| Quantity | 1 building; 1 ridge tablet as an attached item |
| Dimensions | 16.9 m frontage, 13.1 m depth; irimoya-zukuri roof in hongawara tiling, with front hisashi and a partial second storey |
| Owner | Kanehisa Shoji Co., Ltd. |
| Public Access | Exterior viewing from the street only; interior closed; no admission charge |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Kuriyama Family Residence
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/102/2660
- Gojo City: Old Houses Designated as Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.gojo.lg.jp/soshiki/bunka/1/3/2109.html
- Gojo City: Outline of the Gojo Shinmachi Preservation District
- https://www.city.gojo.lg.jp/soshiki/bunka/1_1/1/3116.html
- Gojo City: Townscape Preservation in the Gojo Shinmachi District
- https://www.city.gojo.lg.jp/soshiki/bunka/1_1/2/3122.html
- Gojo City Tourism Association: Shinmachi-dōri
- https://www.gojo.ne.jp/g-kanko/seeing/08shinmachi.html
Last verified: 2026.08.24