Tatsumi Family Residence

A Landowner's Compound in Nishizato, Beside Horyuji

The Tatsumi Family Residence (辰巳家住宅, Tatsumi-ke Jūtaku) is a walled estate in Hōryūji-nishi, Ikaruga Town, Nara Prefecture, built mainly in 1915, whose 13 structures, including a main house, a gatehouse and storehouses, were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on April 24, 2001. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the compound simply as the house of a major landowner in Nishizato, a hamlet of what was once Hōryūji Village.

Nishizato runs west from the West Gate of Hōryūji, the temple complex at the heart of Ikaruga. Ikaruga Town describes it as the settlement of people who kept the temple going, including carpenters who worked on its buildings, and notes that earthen walls and old houses line the lane for about 200 meters west of the gate. Nara Prefecture's heritage database adds that Nakai Masakiyo, the master builder who ran the carpenters of the Kyoto and Osaka region for Tokugawa Ieyasu, came from this hamlet.

The Tatsumi Family Residence sits within Nishizato behind an earthen wall that runs 236 meters around the whole plot.

Twelve of the 13 registered structures date to 1915. The one exception, the Third Storehouse, goes back to the late Edo period (the database gives a span of 1751 to 1829). The shared date points to a house that kept one old storehouse and rebuilt nearly everything else, from the gate to the charcoal shed, in the same campaign.

What Was Registered, and Why

The registrations carry consecutive numbers, 29-0045 through 29-0057, and were officially announced on May 15, 2001. The list reads like an inventory of a prosperous rural household: the main house, the nagayamon gatehouse, a tea room, a covered corridor, three storehouses, three rice storehouses, a barn, a charcoal shed and the perimeter wall. The twelve roofed buildings add up to roughly 865 square meters of building area, and the main house alone accounts for 410 of them.

Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property system uses three criteria, and two of them appear here. Nine structures (the main house, the gatehouse, the corridor and all six storehouses) were registered as buildings that would be difficult to reproduce. The tea room, the barn, the charcoal shed and the wall were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. That a charcoal shed made the list says a good deal about the intent: the aim was to keep the estate whole, not to pick out its finest rooms.

On March 26, 2026, the national Council for Cultural Affairs recommended adding one more entry, a gate and wall of the Tatsumi Family Residence (辰巳家住宅平地門及び塀) dating to 1915. The gate, of the Yakuimon type, closes off the north garden and has cloud-shaped carving on its bracket ends. As of September 2026 this site had not yet confirmed the official announcement of that registration.

Reading the Layout

The estate faces north. The nagayamon gatehouse stands on the north side, slightly east of center, and together with the First Storehouse at the northwest corner it forms the public face of the house. The wall along this side was built one step higher than elsewhere.

In the northwest quarter, the Second Storehouse meets the First Storehouse at a right angle, just to its south. The eave along its east side doubles as an open passage from the main house to the First Storehouse. The main house occupies the middle of the plot, with a frontage of about 30 meters.

Along the east edge, working buildings line up from north to south: the charcoal shed beside the main house, then the barn, the First Rice Storehouse and, in the southeast corner, the Second Rice Storehouse. A single continuous eave runs along the west fronts of the barn and the First Rice Storehouse, and from outside the east wall the gables of the rice storehouses rise above the coping. On the south side, the Third Rice Storehouse stands west of the Second.

South of the main house lies the family's private zone. A long corridor runs south from the house to the small Edo-period Third Storehouse, and the tea room adjoins that storehouse on its west, so the three form a single cluster.

One caution for readers who check the sources. In the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, the descriptive texts for the First Storehouse and the First Rice Storehouse appear to have been swapped, and the same is true of the Third Storehouse and the Third Rice Storehouse. The recorded building areas, the eave positions, the locations given in the texts for the Second Storehouse, tea room, corridor and barn, and the database's own map pins all point the same way. The pages for the individual buildings on this site follow that corrected reading.

The Tatsumi Family Residence in Ikaruga's House Surveys

Ikaruga's historic streets were studied in detail in a 1985 town survey that recorded individual houses in Tatsuta and Nishizato. In 2024, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties surveyed every older building in the town. Its interim report found that of the six Nishizato houses studied in 1985, only three were still standing.

The same report counts 20 vernacular houses in Ikaruga that hold national registration, and 13 of those 20 entries belong to the Tatsumi Family Residence. More than half of the town's registered domestic architecture sits inside a single wall.

For orientation, the Fujinoki Tomb lies about 200 meters west of the compound, at what the Ikaruga tourism site describes as the western edge of Nishizato.

Visiting and Getting There

The Tatsumi Family Residence is a private home. As of September 2026 there is no announced public or special opening, so plan on seeing it only from outside. What you can see from the lanes is mainly the gatehouse and the First Storehouse on the north front, plus storehouse roofs and gables above the wall on the east and south.

No photography rules have been published. Because people live here, keep photos to the exterior, avoid lingering at the gate or along the wall, and do not point a lens through the gateway.

The nearest station is Hōryūji on the JR Yamatoji Line. From the station, Nara Kotsu bus route 72 bound for Hōryūji Sandō reaches the terminus in about 8 minutes, and Nishizato is about a 5-minute walk from there. Walking from the station takes about 20 minutes. If you are already at Hōryūji, leave by the West Gate and head west to enter the hamlet.

Questions about the Nishizato streetscape are handled by the Regional Promotion Division of Ikaruga Town Hall (phone 0745-70-1200).