Shoji Family Residence Main House

The Heart of the Shoji Compound

The Shoji Family Residence Main House (荘司家住宅主屋, Shōji-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a late Edo-period house in Nishiando, Ando Town, Ikoma District, Nara Prefecture, and was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2020.

This was home to the Shoji family, who served as village officials for generations, and with the inner storehouse on its north side it is one of the two oldest of the six registered buildings on the property. It stands a little west of the centre of the plot, facing south, and covers 124 square metres. The detached reception room joins it on the east and the inner storehouse on the north, so every other building on the property takes its position from this one.

The roof is in the Yamato-mune style common to farmhouses of the Nara Basin. Its thatched central section is now temporarily sheathed in metal; the national database records it as thatch under a temporary metal covering, partly tiled, which means the thatch itself is still there. The house was renovated around 1964 (Showa 39).

Why It Was Registered

The Shoji Family Residence Main House received registration number 29-0295 in the 95th round of national registrations, dated 2020/4/3, for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as one of the few early-modern Yamato-mune farmhouses still standing in the area. A Yamato-mune roof pairs a steep thatched main roof, its gable ends closed by solid walls, with lower tiled roofs at the sides. Thatched houses of this kind are steadily disappearing, and a Yamato-mune house that goes back to the Edo period, still surrounded by its family's outbuildings, is what makes the Shoji Family Residence Main House worth keeping.

Look also at the shikidai entrance in the middle of the front. This low boarded step, where guests were formally received, was a feature of the houses of headmen and leading families, and here it announces the household's standing before you are through the door.

What to Look For

Ochimune wings and lean-to roofs

The thatched main roof has an ochimune, a lower roof with its own ridge, attached at each gable end, and lean-to geya roofs run along the front and back. The contrast between the tall main roof and the low tiled roofs around it is what gives a Yamato-mune house its silhouette, and even under the metal sheeting the height and pitch of the original roof are easy to read.

Work floor to the west, four rooms to the east

Inside, the west side is given to the doma, an earth-floored area for cooking and work, while the east holds four rooms set out in 2 rows, one behind the other. It is a plan seen widely in the Nara Basin, with daily chores on the earth floor and living on the raised floors.

A reception room that steps forward

Separate from those four rooms, a zashiki reception room with a tokonoma alcove projects from the front at the upper end of the house, the east side farthest from the work floor. It was most likely where guests who came in by the shikidai entrance were shown, a formal room deliberately set a step apart from everyday life.

The hinge of the compound

The detached reception room of 1899 (Meiji 32) adjoins the house on the east, and the inner storehouse on the north. Seen as the hinge between a reception wing and a storehouse rather than as a building on its own, the Shoji Family Residence Main House makes the workings of the whole property clear.

Visiting

This is a private home and the interior is not open; as of October 2026 we found no announcement of open days. Because the Omoya stands in the middle of the plot, we could not confirm how much of it can be seen from outside the property. Please stay off the grounds and respect the residents' privacy.

Photographs supplied by the Ando Town Board of Education in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database show the house well, and the Yamato-mune roofline is clear in them.