Former Katayama Family Residence (Nariwa-cho, Takahashi City, Okayama Prefecture)

A pigment merchant's compound at Fukiya

The Former Katayama Family Residence is a merchant's compound at Fukiya in Nariwa-cho, Takahashi City, Okayama Prefecture, built between the late 18th century and 1875 and designated an Important Cultural Property on December 19, 2006. The designation covers 5 buildings: the Main House, the Treasure Storehouse, the Rice Storehouse, the Bengara Storehouse, and the Workshop and Rooms.

Fukiya sits at roughly 600 metres on the Kibi Plateau, high enough that snow closes the roads some winters. Copper drew people here first. What kept them was bengara, the deep red iron oxide pigment that Fukiya supplied to lacquerers, potters and housebuilders across the country, and that gives the whole town its colour today.

The Katayama were among the households that made it. Their first head, Asajiro, began production in 1759 and put up a pigment works nearby in 1772. Later heads took the same given name in succession, entered the pigment guild, and served the settlement as headman and elder. The business ran for a little over two centuries; demand fell away through the early Showa years, and the ninth Asajiro closed it in 1971. The property later passed into public ownership and now belongs to Takahashi City.

Fukiya was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1977. The protected area runs about 1.2 kilometres along the old highway and covers about 6.4 hectares, and the Former Katayama Family Residence stands at the western end of Nakamachi, the broadest and most heavily built stretch of it.

What the designation covers

The plot is long and narrow, running back from the street on a north-south axis. Standing on the old highway you see two buildings: the Main House, and the small Treasure Storehouse tucked against its west flank. Everything else is behind. The Rice Storehouse and the Bengara Storehouse stand to the east of the Main House, the Workshop and Rooms to the west, and past the rear gate lie further storehouses that carry a municipal designation rather than a national one.

Nothing here went up in a single campaign. The core of the Main House dates to the closing years of the 18th century. Extensions on the south side and the Buddhist altar wing were finished by 1830, and the reception wing was built new in 1875, at the height of the family's prosperity. The Treasure Storehouse predates the 1830 work. The Rice Storehouse, the Bengara Storehouse and the Workshop and Rooms were all standing by 1855.

Those dates are unusually firm because the family kept its kaso-zu, charts of the house drawn up for geomantic readings. Three survive, from 1830, 1855 and 1860, and all three are designated alongside the buildings as Tsuketari. The 1830 chart shows the ground under the Bengara Storehouse still belonging to a neighbour and a pigment workshop occupying the site of the present Workshop and Rooms. By the 1855 chart the compound has taken essentially the shape a visitor walks through now, with the plot pushed further south to take timber sheds.

In assessing the Former Katayama Family Residence for national designation, the Agency for Cultural Affairs pointed to how completely the working layout of a late Edo merchant household survives here, the main dwelling and its outbuildings intact as a set, and to the building's standing as a representative merchant house of the mountain districts of the Chugoku region. Its role as a core building within the preservation district counted as well.

Reading the buildings

The street front

The facade of the Former Katayama Family Residence is a plastered outer wall with Namako-kabe set into the parts most exposed to weather and fire, the white lattice of jointing standing out against dark tile. Ground-floor openings are fitted with projecting lattice screens; upstairs there are the small barred windows of a working Machiya. Wide double doors and a boarded dado at street level are later, more modern touches.

Look along the ridgeline. It steps up and down rather than running level, because the house was enlarged again and again as the pigment trade grew, and each addition took its own height. A raised vent roof rides the main ridge, drawing smoke out of the kitchen below.

Inside the Main House

The principal block measures 11.4 metres across the front by 15.0 metres deep. It is Kirizuma-zukuri with stepped ridges, entered on the long side, two storeys with a partial third, roofed in Sangawara-buki with sheet metal over some of the eaves. A through-passage Doma runs down the east side, and the rooms open off it in file: a 10-mat shop room at the front where customers were received, then smaller rooms for storage, meals and the maids, with a further pair of 6-mat rooms to the west.

Ceilings tell you where you are. Over the passage and the rooms beside it the joists are left exposed; the inner rooms get a finished Saobuchi-tenjō. The roof frame throughout is Wagoya.

West of the principal block, the Buddhist altar wing runs 6.3 metres by 8.8 metres and holds a 10-mat altar room on the ground floor with a 6-mat room and Tokonoma to the north of it. Beyond that comes the reception wing of 1875, 9.0 metres by 5.9 metres, roofed Irimoya-zukuri. This is the room the family spent money on. The 8-mat inner chamber carries an alcove, staggered shelves and a Tsukeshoin writing bay; a veranda turns the corner outside; carved Ranma panels sit above the sliding partitions. Carpenters were brought from Iwami in what is now western Shimane to build it, and the timber was chosen for its figure.

The storehouses and the workshop

Four outbuildings complete the group, and they are worth more than a glance in passing. The Treasure Storehouse is the smallest at 3.0 metres by 4.9 metres, Dozo-zukuri in Shikkui plaster with boarding round the base, namako work at the corners and drip tiles shedding rain from the wall face. The Rice Storehouse, 6.0 metres by 9.0 metres, is divided on the ground floor into a bath room, an earth-floored store and a boarded rice store, with one open room above; its second storey is plastered where the first is earth-walled, a difference you can read from the yard.

The Bengara Storehouse is the largest building on the plot, 17.3 metres by 7.9 metres, with a shed attached at the south end of its west side. Inside, the roof is framed on longitudinal beams carrying rafters up to the ridge. The Workshop and Rooms bends in an L, 19.6 metres of frontage measured round the turn and 4.0 metres deep, its eaves carried on angled struts. The west part was the workshop; the south part housed the men who worked there. Pigment tools and documents are displayed in the storehouses now.

One detail rewards a slow walk: the decorative metal caps that hide the nails in the namako walling. The designs vary from building to building and from wall to wall, and no two runs are quite alike.

Visiting the Former Katayama Family Residence

The Former Katayama Family Residence is open to the public and you can walk through the interior, including the reception rooms and the storehouses. Admission is 500 yen for adults and 250 yen for elementary and junior high school students, and the same ticket admits you to the Kyodokan, a branch house of the Katayama across the street. A Fukiya Furusato-mura pass covering 5 facilities costs 1,000 yen for adults and 500 yen for students.

Opening hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. between April and November, and 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. between December and March. The site is closed December 29 to January 3. In the winter months several other Fukiya attractions shut on weekdays, but the residence itself stays open daily. Snow and heavy rain warnings do sometimes close the whole village at short notice, so it is worth checking the tourism association's page before setting out in February.

By public transport, take a bus for Fukiya from JR Bitchu-Takahashi Station and ride to the terminus, about 60 minutes; from JR Bitchu-Kawamo Station the journey is about 40 minutes. Drivers reach the town in about 40 minutes from the Niimi interchange on the Chugoku Expressway, or about 55 minutes from the Kayo interchange on the Okayama Expressway. Public car parks in Fukiya are free. Since March 20, 2026 a small electric shuttle has run through the townscape mainly at weekends and on public holidays.

No restriction on ordinary visitor photography is announced for the Former Katayama Family Residence, though the interiors are dim and worth a moment's patience. Press and commercial filming go through the Fukiya branch of the Takahashi City Tourism Association, which asks to be contacted beforehand on 0866-29-2205. If you are unsure about a particular room, ask at the desk when you buy your ticket.