Former Ohara Family Residence (Chuo, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture)

A Merchant Compound at the Head of the Kurashiki Canal

The Former Ohara Family Residence (Chuo, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture) is a merchant compound in Chuo, Kurashiki City, built up between the late Edo period and the early Taisho era, and its main house and nine other buildings were designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan in 1971. Known in Japanese as Kyū Ōhara-ke Jūtaku (旧大原家住宅), it now opens to visitors under the name Katarai-za Ohara Hontei (語らい座 大原本邸), which the operators translate as Ohara House Katalyzer.

Kurashiki was governed directly by the shogunate from the early Edo period, and traffic on its canal made the town prosperous. By the late Edo period a class of newly rich merchants, called shinroku, was overtaking the old hereditary families known as koroku. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Ohara as the leading house among these newcomers.

According to the family's own account, the first head, Tadanori, moved to Kurashiki village during the Genroku era (1688 to 1704). The third head, Kanemoto, settled on this plot, and work on the main house began in 1795. The Oharas traded in ginned cotton, then turned to industry: the sixth head, Koshiro, became president of the Kurashiki spinning mill and Kurashiki Bank, and his son Magosaburo, who was born and raised in this house, went on to found the Ohara Museum of Art and Kurashiki Central Hospital.

The designation covers ten structures: the main house, a detached reception pavilion, and eight clay-walled storehouses. Three sections of boundary wall are included as appurtenances, and Kurashiki City notes that the residential land was added to the designation in 1982. The property is owned by Sanraku Co., Ltd.

Why the Ohara Residence Was Designated

The agency's assessment is straightforward. Of all the merchant houses still standing in Kurashiki, the Ohara residence is the largest, and its ancillary buildings survive as a complete set. The value lies less in any single structure than in the way the whole compound preserves the layout of a Kurashiki trading house.

The storehouses tell that story in sequence. The national database dates the main house and the Uchikura storehouse to the first half of the 19th century; the reception pavilion and three storehouses to the mid-19th century; two more to the Meiji era; and the last two to the Taisho era. One of those, the Jinshigura, went up in 1912, a year that falls on jinshi in the sixty-year calendar cycle. In other words, the family kept adding buildings for roughly a hundred years.

Sources differ on the main house itself. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the first half of the 19th century, while Kurashiki City and the Ohara House Katalyzer both cite 1795 as the start of construction. The operators add that repeated extensions had brought the house close to its present form by the mid-Meiji period.

The Former Ohara Family Residence is also one of the component properties of "Kurashiki: A Story Spun from a Single Cotton Flower," a narrative recognized under the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Japan Heritage program.

What to Look For

The street front of the main house

Seen from the canal-side lane, the Ohara main house presents a heavy roof of Hongawarabuki tiles over a low upper floor of the Tsushi-nikai type. The front keeps the lattice and window designs known locally as Kurashiki-goshi and Kurashiki-mado. Step a little to one side of the facade and the fine spacing of the lattice reads much more clearly in shadow.

The agency records the living section as 14.4 meters wide and 16.8 meters deep, partly two-storied, under a T-shaped Irimoya-zukuri roof with eaves on all four sides; the reception wing behind it measures 13.4 by 6.6 meters under Sangawara-buki tiles. Kurashiki City reads the roof differently, describing it as a Kirizuma-zukuri gable roof with added pent eaves that only looks hipped-and-gabled. It is worth studying the eave ends and deciding for yourself.

Inside, an earthen-floored passage runs back from the entrance, with the shop room, family room and kitchen lined up on the left. A large cooking range still stands where household staff once worked.

Eight storehouses along a stone path

Beyond the passage, a flagstone path opens to the right, lined with storehouses of Dozo-zukuri construction. Their lower walls are faced in Namako-kabe: tiles fixed to the wall, with the joints raised in white Shikkui plaster. Because the black-and-white band runs at the same height from one building to the next, the path feels like a small street inside the property.

The buildings vary more than they first appear to. Uchikura, the smallest, is 6.8 by 3.9 meters. Uchinakagura stretches to 16.4 meters, and Nakagura runs 12.2 meters with a partial upper floor. Jinshigura is the only one the agency records as Tsumairi, with its gable end turned to the front, which makes it easy to pick out. Look back from the path and you can see the roof of Yurinso, the Ohara family's villa next door.

The storehouses now hold exhibits. Nakagura traces eight generations of the family, including the 1889 application and articles of incorporation for the spinning company. Uchinakagura is devoted to the eighth head, Soichiro, and doubles as a book cafe lined with about 2,000 volumes from the family library.

The reception pavilion and garden

At the far end of the path, on the left, stands the detached reception pavilion, 8.8 by 5.6 meters under a tiled hip-and-gable roof. Magosaburo used it for tea, and Soichiro for listening to records.

Step up onto the tatami and a garden opens out that no one outside the walls would suspect. The operators say Magosaburo took part in designing it. Old pines and maples shade a carpet of moss, and matcha is served in the room, which makes this the quietest corner of the Ohara residence.

Visiting the Former Ohara Family Residence

The Former Ohara Family Residence has been open to the public since April 2018. Hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m. It closes on Mondays (opening instead when Monday is a national or substitute holiday) and over the New Year period, and may also close for private bookings.

Admission is 500 yen for adults and 400 yen for high school students and younger; groups of 20 or more pay 400 yen and 200 yen respectively. Preschool children enter free. Entry may be limited when the house is crowded.

Photography is allowed throughout, exhibits included, as long as you are considerate of other visitors. Because of restrictions that come with its status as a cultural property, the house is not barrier-free; the staff ask wheelchair users to get in touch beforehand so they can help where possible.

The residence faces the Ohara Museum of Art across the Kurashiki River, about 15 minutes on foot from JR Kurashiki Station. There is no on-site parking, so drivers should use the paid lots around the Bikan Historical Quarter, which is about 20 minutes from the Kurashiki interchange on the Sanyo Expressway or the Hayashima interchange on the Seto-Chuo Expressway. The contact number is 086-434-6277.