Shoji Family Residence

A Village Headman's Compound on an Old Moat

The Shoji Family Residence (荘司家住宅, Shōji-ke Jūtaku) is a long-established family's compound in Nishiando, Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, where six buildings, a late Edo-period main house and inner storehouse joined by reception rooms and storehouses of the Meiji and Taisho eras, were listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 3, 2020.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, generation after generation of the Shoji family served as village officials. At the centre of the property stands a south-facing main house under a Yamato-mune roof, the steep, gable-ended form peculiar to farmhouses of the Nara Basin, and the other buildings gather around it.

Nishiando was once a moated village, a settlement ringed by a protective ditch. The Shoji Family Residence runs along the line of that former moat, and the building on its eastern edge was listed partly because it keeps the look of a canal-side village street. Across the old moat, on a separate plot to the east, stands the rice storehouse. The family's buildings let you trace how the household spread beyond the ditch.

The six listed structures are the main house, a detached reception room, a new reception room joined to a rice barn, an inner storehouse, a storehouse, and a rice storehouse. Living quarters, two rooms for receiving guests, two buildings for the harvest and two for tools and papers: together they show how a leading village household built up its home between the last decades of the Edo period and the Taisho era.

Reading the Dates

Set out by the dates in the national database, the Shoji Family Residence grew over roughly a century, starting from the late Edo-period main house.

• Main house: late Edo period, renovated around 1964 (Showa 39)
• Inner storehouse: late Edo period
• New reception room and rice barn: mid Meiji period, extended around 1913 (Taisho 2) and again around 1935 (Showa 10)
• Storehouse: mid Meiji period, extended around 1935 (Showa 10)
• Detached reception room: 1899 (Meiji 32), extended in the late Taisho period
• Rice storehouse: around 1913 (Taisho 2)

The main house and the inner storehouse attached to its north side form the core. In the Meiji era the family added the detached reception room to the east of the house, the new reception room and rice barn along the east edge of the plot, and a storehouse to the north-east, giving the household more space both for guests and for storage.

One date turns up twice. Around 1913 is given both for an extension to the new reception room and rice barn and for the building of the rice storehouse. The east face of the rice barn carries a covered passage roof leading toward the rice storehouse plot, so the work to push the compound across the moat may well have been done in a single campaign. The Agency's records do not say so; this is an inference from the matching dates.

How the Buildings Are Arranged

The buildings of the Shoji Family Residence are tied together by corridors, roofs and walls into one block centred on the main house. Based on the Agency's notes, it fits together like this.

Centre-west: the main house

The main house sits a little west of the centre of the plot, facing south. Its building area of 124 square metres is the largest of the six.

North of the house: the inner storehouse

Attached to the north side of the main house is the inner storehouse, a small plastered storehouse 2 ken square, the ken being the traditional bay used to size Japanese buildings. It held both tools and documents and anchors the northern edge of the compound.

East of the house: the detached reception room

The detached reception room is a 2-storey block joined to the east side of the main house, its lean-to geya roofs on the north and south running on from those of the house.

North-east: the storehouse

The storehouse, used for tools, stands at the north-east corner of the plot. Its south side meets the corridor serving the two reception rooms, and with the inner storehouse it forms the compound's northern frontage.

East edge, south end: the new reception room and rice barn

This single building pairs the new reception room on the north with the rice barn on the south. From the middle of its west face a wall runs toward the detached reception room, and from the middle of its east face a covered roof reaches across toward the rice storehouse plot.

Beyond the old moat: the rice storehouse

The rice storehouse stands east of the main compound, on a separate plot across the former moat, set toward the north of that plot and facing south. Even its address differs: lot 810-1, while the other five buildings stand on lot 790.

Reception rooms and storehouses are joined to the main house, while the buildings for rice and harvested sheaves sit on the east, toward the moat. It reads as a plan that kept daily life on the west of the property and the handling of the harvest on the east.

What Was Registered

The six buildings of the Shoji Family Residence entered the national register in the 95th round of registrations on April 3, 2020, with official notice published the same day. They hold consecutive registration numbers 29-0295 through 29-0300, and all six were listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• Main house (29-0295): wooden, single storey, thatched roof (temporarily covered with metal sheeting) partly tiled, building area 124 square metres
• Detached reception room (29-0296): wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 40 square metres
• New reception room and rice barn (29-0297): wooden, single storey with a partial 2nd floor, tiled roof, building area 73 square metres, with a wall and wicket door
• Inner storehouse (29-0298): wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 30 square metres
• Storehouse (29-0299): wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 37 square metres
• Rice storehouse (29-0300): wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 77 square metres

The Agency singles out the main house as one of the few early-modern Yamato-mune farmhouses left in the area. Among the storehouses, the Taisho-era rice storehouse is by far the largest, more than twice the size of the Edo-period inner storehouse. The scale of the building put up to hold rice says a good deal about the standing of a family that served as village officials.

Visiting and Getting There

The Shoji Family Residence is a private home. As of October 2026 we found no announcement of public openings or guided visits, and neither the grounds nor the interiors are open. If you look at the buildings from outside, please stay off the property and respect the residents' privacy.

The best way to see all six buildings is through the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, where each entry carries photographs supplied by the Ando Town Board of Education, including the Yamato-mune roof of the main house and the white plastered storehouses.

The address is 790 Nishiando, Ando Town (the rice storehouse is at 810-1). The compound lies about 1.4 kilometres east-north-east of JR Horyuji Station in a straight line. That figure is an estimate taken from map positions; no official access directions have been published.

About the Name

Shoji Family Residence is read Shōji-ke Jūtaku in Japanese. In the national database each of the six buildings is listed under the house name followed by the building name, as in Shōji-ke Jūtaku Omoya (main house) or Shōji-ke Jūtaku Komegura (rice storehouse). The inner storehouse is the uchigura, and the rice barn is read inaya. Nara Prefecture's own list groups them as the main house and five other buildings of the Shoji Family Residence.