Ito Family Residence

Six Buildings Behind One Wall

The Ito Family Residence is a landowner's estate in Ushita, Gosen City, Niigata Prefecture, whose six surviving buildings, the main house, three-storied storehouse, rice storehouse, household goods storehouse and weighing room, barn, and front gate with inner fence, were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 12 July 2005.

Ushita sits north of central Gosen, in the rice country that spreads south of the Agano River. Walk along the road through the hamlet and a white-plastered storehouse rises three storeys straight ahead. The Ito Family Residence lies behind it, its edges drawn by a run of storehouses and a plank fence.

The Ito family served as shoya, the headmen of the village, in the later Edo period. Gosen City's cultural properties booklet dates the main house to 1804 and notes that later work reused old timber and stopped at partial remodelling, which is why the buildings still read as old. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives 1891 for the same building. The two records disagree on the date; both describe a house altered and extended many times.

Storehouses First, House Later

The six buildings of the Ito Family Residence went up over roughly fifty years. The household goods storehouse of 1876 is the oldest, followed by the rice storehouse of 1879. The main house took its present form in 1891, and the three-storied storehouse that fronts the road came last among the dated buildings, in 1902. The barn belongs to the early Meiji era and the gate and fence to the early Taisho era, around 1912 to 1925.

Rice came before comfort. The buildings that held and measured the crop were raised first, the dwelling was rebuilt afterwards, and only then did a gate and fence close the composition. In 1915 part of the household goods storehouse was moved bodily on rollers, a technique called hikiya, and extended, so that the row of storehouses could keep running east without a break.

Gosen City describes the estate as showing how a prosperous farming family lived between the late Edo period and the early Showa era. The point is the ensemble rather than any single building.

How the Site Is Laid Out

The Ito Family Residence puts its storehouses to the south and its living quarters to the north. The main house stands at the centre of the plot, slightly north, facing south. Southeast of it the rice storehouse faces north, and east of that the weighing room and the household goods storehouse continue in a single line. A geya, a low lean-to roof, runs along the north face of all three, so the row reads as one long wall from the front.

At the southern edge of the plot, hard against the road, stands the three-storied storehouse, with the barn beside it to the west. The front gate opens to the south, northwest of the rice storehouse, and the inner fence attached to it divides the ground between the main house and the rice storehouse on a north-south line.

Seen from outside, the sensible order is the gable ends of the three-storied storehouse and barn from the road to the south, then a turn west to stand in front of the gate. From there the roof of the main house shows above the fence.

Visiting

Gosen City lists the Ito Family Residence as open at any time, exterior only. There is no booking, no ticket, and no interior access. People still live here and the ground is private property. Visitors stay on the road and look in; they do not step past the gate.

No photography rule has been published. Shots of the exteriors from the public road are the reasonable limit, and pointing a lens through the gate or at residents is not. For current conditions, the Lifelong Learning Division of the Gosen City Board of Education can be reached on 0250-42-5195.

The buildings read most clearly from late autumn, once the rice is cut and the sightlines open, until the snow arrives. Ushita gets real snow in winter and the road shoulders narrow.

Getting There

Shinseki Station on the JR Banetsu West Line is the nearest railway stop, about 1.1 kilometres from the Ito Family Residence, a walk of fifteen to twenty minutes. From Niigata Station, take the Shinetsu Main Line to Niitsu and change there. Trains on this stretch run roughly once an hour and the gaps widen at midday, so check the return departure before setting out.

By car it is about ten minutes north of central Gosen on the prefectural road. Gosen City lists no visitor parking, however, and the lanes through the hamlet are narrow. Treat roadside parking as unavailable and plan to arrive on foot from the station.

The Six Listed Buildings

Six buildings carry the listing at the Ito Family Residence, numbered consecutively from 15-0178 to 15-0183 in the national register.

• Main House, 1891. Timber frame, single storey with a 2-storey section, building area 259 square metres
• Three-Storied Storehouse, 1902. Dozo-zukuri construction, 3 storeys, building area 89 square metres
• Rice Storehouse, 1879. Dozo-zukuri, single storey, building area 51 square metres
• Household Goods Storehouse and Weighing Room, 1876. Dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys with a single-storey section, building area 114 square metres
• Barn, early Meiji era. Timber frame, single storey, building area 43 square metres
• Front Gate and Inner Fence, early Taisho era. Gate 2.1 metres wide, fence 21 metres long

All six were listed under the same criterion: contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The judgement rests on the group. No single building here is a masterpiece; together they make the face of the hamlet.

The Name

The name is read Ito-ke Jutaku in Japanese. The Agency for Cultural Affairs registers each building under a compound name, as in Ito Family Residence Main House or Ito Family Residence Three-Storied Storehouse. Niigata Prefecture holds a second, unrelated Ito Family Residence at Yokogoshi in Niigata City, which is an Important Cultural Property. The estate at Ushita in Gosen is the registered property described here.