Former Nagase Family Residence Main House

What Is the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House?

The Former Nagase Family Residence Main House (旧永瀬家住宅主屋, Kyū Nagase-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a 2-story wooden townhouse in Matsuki, Akaiwa City, Okayama Prefecture, built in the early Meiji period (1868–1882) as the main dwelling of the house where the poet Nagase Kiyoko was born, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on October 27, 2017.

It has an irimoya roof, the hip-and-gable form common on rural houses, covered according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs in sheet metal with some tiled sections. The building area is 87 square meters. Today both floors serve as galleries for Kiyoko no Ie ("Kiyoko's House"), as the property is now called.

Kiyoko was born here in 1906 and left at 2, when her father's work took the family away. She came back at 39, around the end of the Second World War, and for about 20 years, until she moved to Okayama City, this main house was where she wrote, between farm work and raising four children.

Why the Main House Was Registered

The Former Nagase Family Residence Main House is registration no. 33-0280, listed under the criterion "contributing to the historic landscape of the country." The well in the same compound was registered on the same day under the same criterion.

The Agency's description singles out the plan. The entrance opens at the left of the front, and from it a slightly irregular Doma, or earthen-floored work area, runs toward the back. The rear part of the doma is paved with bricks set in the Shihanjiki pattern. The raised floor is divided into 4 rooms in a square "rice-field" layout, and the upper floor follows almost the same arrangement. The description adds that the house is widely loved locally as the birthplace of Nagase Kiyoko, often called a pioneer among Japanese women poets.

Akaiwa City's register of cultural properties likewise presents the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House as a townhouse said to date from the early Meiji years and notes its link to the poet.

What to Look For in the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House

The diagonal brick floor

Walk in through the entrance and keep going: partway along, the floor under your feet changes to brick. Square bricks are set at 45 degrees to the walls, so the joints form a diamond grid. Near the door, by contrast, the doma has the irregular outline the Agency describes, and the step from that loose shape to the tidy geometry of the brick paving is easy to see.

Four rooms below, four rooms above

Beside the doma, the raised floor holds 4 rooms arranged two by two. Go upstairs and you find nearly the same layout, so it is easy to match each upper room with the one beneath it. The preservation society calls the upstairs exhibition "Sakki Kiyoko ga ita" (Kiyoko Was Just Here), with her books and photographs and a corner where visitors can copy out her poems by hand.

The upstairs alcove and the view

The society points out the Tokonoma, or display alcove, on the upper floor, which is decorated with Raden mother-of-pearl inlay. From the upstairs windows you see the rice fields and hills that Kiyoko looked out on, from the same rooms where many of her poems were written.

Repairs by the preservation society

The society reroofed the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House in 2011 and went on to repair it further, including seismic strengthening, all with private donations. Electric lights were installed only in February 2024.

Visiting the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House

You can go inside the Former Nagase Family Residence Main House whenever Kiyoko no Ie is open. The ground floor holds the Yasogusa gallery, a shop and a bookshop, and screens a 35-minute documentary on Kiyoko; the upper floor holds the second gallery. Entry to the shop and bookshop alone is free.

To follow the plan in the order the Agency describes it, walk the doma all the way to the brick floor first, then step up into the rooms and climb to the upper floor. From the main house, stone steps lead down to the kamaya kitchen building and the annex.

The society's website gives no rule on photography inside, so ask at the reception desk if you want to take pictures. Opening hours, admission and directions are covered on the Former Nagase Family Residence page.