Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex

An Oil Man's Villa That Became a Landlord's Town House

The Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex (北方文化博物館新潟分館, Hoppō Bunka Hakubutsukan Niigata Bunkan) in Minamihamadori, Chuo Ward, Niigata City, is a former Ito family villa centred on a main house built around 1895, and seven of its buildings were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 28 April 2000.

The house was not built for the Ito family. According to the museum's own history, the main house went up in 1895 as a second home for Shimizu Tsunesaku of Nagaoka, who had made his fortune drilling at the Nishiyama oil field in Amaze, Izumozaki. The Agency for Cultural Affairs is more careful: its listing says only that Mr. Shimizu of Nagaoka is said to have built it around that year.

After Shimizu died, the property passed to the Ito family, the great landowners of Somi in what is now Konan Ward. The sources disagree slightly on when. The museum's history page and Niigata City both say the end of the Meiji era (the early 1910s), while the annex's own homepage says the beginning of the Taisho era. Either way, the Itos, whose country seat is itself a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, now had a foothold in the city.

Three Rounds of Building

Put the seven buildings of the Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex in date order and the story of the estate falls into place. Only the main house belongs to the Shimizu years. Everything else was added by the Itos.

In 1915 a front gate, a storehouse and a brick wall went up together. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the gate to the time the family improved the villa after buying it, so this was the moment the outer edge of the property was secured.

Around 1925 a teahouse and a small waiting arbor followed, part of what the agency calls a reworking of the villa late in the Taisho era. Then, around 1928, a two-storey Western-style building was attached to the southeast corner of the main house.

The museum records that Ito Kurota, younger brother of the sixth head of the family and guardian to the seventh, set up a branch household here, known as the Minamihama Ito family. In 1946 the villa became an annex of the newly founded Northern Culture Museum foundation.

Where Aizu Yaichi Spent His Last Decade

The name most visitors connect with the Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex is Aizu Yaichi (會津八一, 1881 to 1956), poet, calligrapher and historian of Buddhist art. The museum explains that after being bombed out in 1945 he took refuge in the former town of Nakajo, in Niigata Prefecture, and in 1946 agreed to run the newspaper Yukan Niigata. Sakaguchi Kenkichi, asked to find him lodgings in a city short of housing, settled on this Ito property.

Yaichi called the Western-style building Minamihama Shūsōdō and lived there for about ten years, until his death. The agency's listing confirms that he occupied it from 1946 for roughly a decade. Today the building is a gallery for his calligraphy and papers, along with works by the monk-poet Ryōkan.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex opens to the street on the southwest, where the front gate stands roughly at the centre of the frontage. Behind it is the entrance to the main house, a plain two-storey building clad in weatherboard. The museum's floor plan gives its principal rooms names of their own: 坐忘 and 松風 on the ground floor, 潮音堂 upstairs.

The Western-style building joins the main house to the southeast and has its own entrance hall. A brick wall about three metres high closes off the southeastern part of the plot. Behind the two houses lies a dry landscape garden, and the tea buildings face it. The teahouse sits slightly apart to the northwest of the main house, the storehouse occupies the far northern corner, and the waiting arbor stands just south of the storehouse.

On the floor plan a corridor links the main house to the Western-style building, so a visit moves from the tatami rooms and their garden view into the galleries.

Opening Hours and Admission

The Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex is open 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. from April to November and 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from December to March. It closes on Mondays (or the following day when Monday is a public holiday), at the end of the year, and for the whole of January and February. Winter travellers should note that last point. The hours and closing days differ from those of the main museum at Somi.

Admission is 450 yen for adults (350 yen each in groups of 20 or more) and 200 yen for elementary and junior high school students (150 yen in groups), who enter free on Sundays and public holidays. High school and university students and visitors aged 70 or over pay the adult group rate on showing ID. The museum has announced that from 1 April 2027 the adult fee will rise to 500 yen, and the adult group fee to 400 yen.

The museum does not publish a photography policy for the annex, so ask at the reception desk before taking pictures indoors. The annex can be reached on 025-222-2262. Enquiries about hiring rooms for tea gatherings go to the main museum on 025-385-2001.

Getting There

The easiest way to reach the Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex is the sightseeing loop bus from the bus terminal in front of Niigata Station. Niigata City lists two routes, one running first via Hakusan Park and the other first via Toki Messe. Both take about 30 minutes to the stop named for the annex. On an ordinary city bus, get off at Nishi-Ōhata and walk about three minutes.

By car it is about 20 minutes from the Shichikuyama interchange on the Niigata Bypass. There are only two free parking spaces. When they are taken, use a paid car park nearby; visitors who park at the city's Nishibori underground car park can ask at reception for a 60-minute free ticket.

The main museum at Somi, in Konan Ward, is about 14 kilometres away in a straight line and around 40 minutes by car according to the museum. To see both in one day, pick a date when the annex (closed Mondays) and the main site (closed Tuesdays, except in April, May, October and November) are both open.

The Seven Registered Buildings

All seven buildings of the Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex were registered on 28 April 2000, under the consecutive numbers 15-0074 to 15-0080.

• Main house: around 1895, timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, 174 square metres
• Western-style building: around 1928, timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, 79 square metres
• Teahouse: around 1925, timber, 1 storey, tiled roof, 20 square metres
• Waiting arbor: around 1925, timber, 1 storey, shingle roof, 2.3 square metres
• Storehouse: 1915, timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, 44 square metres
• Front gate: 1915, timber yakuimon gate, 2.3 metres wide
• Brick wall: 1915, brick, 37 metres long

The storehouse was listed as a building that would be difficult to reproduce. The other six were listed as models of good design.

Names and Addresses

In the national database each building appears under a compound name, such as Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex Main House. The annex's website carries the words "not the main museum" in its title, a useful warning: the Northern Culture Museum Niigata Annex and the landlord's estate at Somi are two different places.

The agency lists the address as 2-561-3 Minamihamadori, while the museum and the city give 562 Minamihamadori 2-bancho. The second form works better in map searches.