Ninomiya Family Residence (Hasuno, Seiro)

The Ninomiya Estate at Hasuno

The Ninomiya Family Residence (Hasuno, Seiro) is the estate of a great landowning family in Hasuno, Seirō Town, Niigata Prefecture, rebuilt after a fire in 1875; its main house, gates, reception wing, lakeside pavilion and storehouses, fifteen structures in all, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2006. The estate faces the Bentengata lagoon and includes the Seishō-en Japanese garden and a large rose garden. During its early-summer opening it goes by the name Ninomiya Rose & Japanese Garden (二宮家バラ園と日本庭園).

The Ninomiyas were village headmen of Hasugata Kōya, the old name of Hasuno, under the Shibata domain, and were later granted hereditary rank equal to a district headman. After the Meiji Restoration they became what Niigata people called a sen-chōbu jinushi, a landlord of about a thousand hectares. By the family's own account, in 1917 they held more than 968 chō of farmland and more than 15 chō of residential land.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the Hasuno household as a branch of the Ninomiya family of Tawarayanagi in Niigata City. The Tawarayanagi house and farm building are also registered, but they form a separate property in a different town.

How the Estate Grew

Today's buildings begin with a fire. Lightning burned the house in 1875, and rebuilding took about nine years; the Main House was completed in 1884, and the family says it repeated the lost house. The No. 1 Rice Storehouse, Storehouse No. 1 and the miscellaneous storehouse also date from 1875, and the row-house Great Gate at the front went up in 1877.

Building continued. The Miso Storehouse and Household Rice Storehouse followed in 1893, Storehouse No. 3 in 1901, the No. 2 Rice Storehouse in 1902, and Storehouses No. 4 and No. 5 in 1908. The lakeside pavilion and the workshop came in the Taisho era, and the New Inner Room reception wing in 1935, the same year the Great Gate was enlarged.

Some buildings are gone. The family says a fully two-storey banquet hall, used for weddings, stood where the garden is now until the post-war years. The Main House itself was altered in 1951.

Seisho-en and the Bentengata Lagoon

The Seishō-en garden was laid out with the rebuilding and is attributed to a gardener in the service of the Shibata domain. It has ancient umbrella pine and camphor trees, a grove of tortoise-shell bamboo, a flat dry garden, stone lanterns, and west of the artificial hill a stone five-storey pagoda that the family says it bought from the Shirase family of Shibata in 1877.

What sets the garden apart is the lagoon beyond it. The water and the pine woods on the far shore form its backdrop, and from the reception rooms of the Main House garden and lagoon read as one view. Swans winter on the Bentengata.

Layout and a Walking Order

You enter through the main gate and the Great Gate toward the Main House. East of the house, the Middle Gate and a board fence divide the grounds from north to south. To the west, Storehouse No. 1 runs north to south, and beyond it Storehouses No. 2 to No. 5 stand in a row from north to south, their ridges running east to west; shared roofs join Nos. 2 and 3 and Nos. 4 and 5.

The workshop and the Miso Storehouse and Household Rice Storehouse to its west share one continuous eave along their south side. The New Inner Room stands toward the south-west, and the Ryotei Pavilion sits at the south-east corner on the lagoon. The two rice storehouses stand on separate lots, 1106-1 and 1107-1, apart from the 1087 plot with the Main House.

During the opening, the natural route is through the gates, around the rose garden and the Japanese garden, and from the garden to views of the Main House, the pavilion and the lagoon. No building interiors are open, and how close you can get to each one depends on the route set that year.

Opening Dates, Fees and Access

The estate is the home of the ninth-generation head of the family and his household. It is not a year-round attraction: it opens to the public only for about four weeks each early summer, when the roses bloom.

In 2026 the opening ran from 16 May to 14 June, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at weekends. The maintenance contribution was ¥700 per person, or ¥600 each for groups of 20 or more. Dates are announced each year on the family's website; the telephone number is 0254-27-2002.

By car, leave the Shinshin Bypass at the Hasuno interchange, turn right if coming from Niigata or left if coming from Shibata, and the main gate is about 300 metres ahead. Parking lots 1 and 2 are in front of the gate; when they are full, use the Bentengata Fuchi Park lot behind the estate, which also takes coaches. The nearest station is Sasaki on the JR Hakushin Line, about a 30-minute walk.