Nishida Family Residence

About the Nishida Family Residence

The Nishida Family Residence (西田家住宅, Nishida-ke Jūtaku) in Minoyamacho, Yamatokoriyama City, Nara Prefecture, is an early Showa-period Japanese-style house whose eight buildings and perimeter stone wall were each entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 February 2004.

Yamatokoriyama City describes the estate as the town's leading example of modern Japanese-style architecture: a house raised on high stone walls, built in the early decades of the Showa era. The two-storey main house stands a full head above its neighbours, and the dressed-stone wall that runs along the street sets the tone for this corner of the old castle town.

Each structure was registered separately, under the consecutive numbers 29-0074 to 29-0082. The city's own register groups them as one entry, "Main House Central Wing and others, 8 buildings and 1 site," and lists the owner as a private individual. This is a lived-in home, not a museum.

Another property known as the Nishida Family Residence stands in the former village of Nishiyoshino, now part of Gojo City, also in Nara Prefecture. It is a different house on a different site.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The formal face of the Nishida Family Residence looks north. Beyond the main gate on the north side rises the Main House Central Wing, its projecting entrance crowned by a curved karahafu gable roofed in cypress bark. To the right of the gate sits a tiny one-bay shrine, with a four-post worship pavilion set in front of it.

The main house is registered as three wings. The single-storey West Wing adjoins the Central Wing on its west side; from the West Wing an inner storehouse runs north to south, linking through to the South Wing, which stretches east to west along the southern edge of the plot. A second, larger storehouse is attached further west. Together the three wings and two storehouses form one continuous block of buildings, the backbone of the Nishida Family Residence.

The eastern part of the plot is garden. Here stands a small detached room, 2 ken square, finished in a light sukiya manner that contrasts with the formal shoin rooms of the main house. It is the only building on the site laid out on the Edo-ma module.

Stone walls enclose the north, east and south sides, starting just east of the main gate. They run for about 160 metres and rise to more than 2 metres at their highest. The whole estate sits on this raised platform, so the buildings are seen from below. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the wall preserves a piece of Yamatokoriyama's pre-war castle-town streetscape.

The Nine Registered Structures

All nine structures at the Nishida Family Residence were registered on 17 February 2004 and officially announced on 4 March 2004. They qualified under different criteria: the Central Wing, the South Wing and the inner storehouse as models of design; the worship pavilion as a structure that would be difficult to reproduce; and the remaining five as contributions to the historic landscape.

• Main House Central Wing: wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 178 square metres. Formal rooms on either side of a central corridor, with the Bamboo Room in the northeast corner
• Main House West Wing: wooden, 1 storey, tiled roof, building area 45 square metres. Heptagonal windows flank the side entrance
• Main House South Wing: wooden, 1 storey, tiled roof, building area 96 square metres. A tatami reception room, an anteroom and a Western-style room in a row
• Inner Storehouse: earthen-walled, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 32 square metres. Links the West and South wings under a floating roof
• Storehouse: earthen-walled, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 35 square metres. A 3-bay storehouse attached west of the West Wing
• Detached Room: wooden, 1 storey, copper roof, building area 13 square metres. A small sukiya-style room in the east garden
• Shrine: wooden, 1 storey, copper roof, building area 0.89 square metres. A one-bay nagare-style shrine to the right of the main gate
• Worship Pavilion: wooden, 1 storey, copper roof, building area 3.36 square metres. A four-post shelter in front of the shrine
• Stone Wall: stone, 161 metres long (160 metres in the Agency's commentary). Encloses the north, east and south sides

Visiting and Getting There

The Nishida Family Residence is a private home, and its interiors are normally closed to the public; Yamatokoriyama City lists it as not open. Visits are limited to looking at the exterior from the public road. The gates and the top of the stone wall are off limits.

What you can reliably see from the street is the stone wall and, above it, the upper floor and roofs of the Main House Central Wing. The storehouses, the detached room, the shrine and the worship pavilion stand inside the plot and may not be visible from outside.

Keep photography to the exterior as seen from the road, and avoid pointing a camera through windows or at the people who live here.

The nearest station is Kintetsu-Koriyama on the Kintetsu Kashihara Line, about a 5-minute walk northeast of the Nishida Family Residence. The house sits in a residential district that still follows the old castle-town street plan, so arriving on foot from the station works better than driving.