Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence (Yakage Town, Oda District, Okayama Prefecture)

What Is the Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence?

The Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence (旧矢掛本陣石井家住宅, Kyū Yakage Honjin Ishii-ke Jūtaku) in Yakage Town, Okayama Prefecture, is a late Edo to Meiji period compound that served as both an official inn for traveling lords and a sake brewery, and its 11 buildings were designated an Important Cultural Property in 1969.

A honjin was the top-ranked lodging in a post town, reserved for daimyo on their alternate-attendance journeys to and from Edo, for court nobles, and for shogunate officials. The Ishii family held that post in Yakage, a stop on the old San'yōdō highway, for generations. From 1708 they also served as ōjōya, the village headmen responsible for a wider district, and by the Genroku era (around 1700) they were brewing sake. One household, in other words, ran an inn for the elite, handled local administration, and made sake for a living, all behind the same street front.

That street front is long. The lot faces the old highway with a frontage of about 36 meters and runs back roughly 90 meters. Along this narrow strip, the reception wing for honored guests, the shop and living quarters, and the brewing buildings stand eave to eave.

You will also see the property called simply the Yakage Honjin. The town name is pronounced Yakage; the Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the reading as Yakake.

Why the Ishii Residence Is an Important Cultural Property

The main house and ten other buildings of the Ishii Residence were designated an Important Cultural Property on June 20, 1969. The residence of the Takakusa family, who kept the town's secondary inn, or waki-honjin, was designated on the same day, and an additional designation for the Ishii Residence followed on June 2, 1983.

What the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out is less the age of any one building than the layout as a whole. The guest wing and its ceremonial gate, the main house where the family lived and kept accounts, the brewing sheds, the storehouses for rice and household goods, and the rear and middle gates all remain in the places they were built for. Few sites show so completely how a merchant house doubled as a lord's inn.

The designation also covers several attached items, known as Tsuketari: a retirement cottage, a guardhouse with a washing area and bathhouse, the earthen walls attached to the Onarimon and rear gates, and one sheet of kasō-zu, a drawing of the house plan made to judge its layout by traditional geomantic principles.

Restoration came in stages. A repair report on the rear gate was published in 1972, and a full dismantling and restoration of the compound began in 1986. The Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence has been open to the public since 1991.

Highlights of the Ishii Honjin, from Guest Wing to Brewery

The Onarimon Gate and the Guest Wing

The most formal way into the Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence is the Onarimon, a Munamon gate with a Hongawarabuki tiled roof, dating to around the Tenpō era in the first half of the 19th century. It existed to receive daimyo and other high-ranking guests, and the earthen wall that continues from it is part of the designation.

Behind it stands the zashiki, the guest wing, built in 1832. It measures 11.7 by 12.0 meters under an Irimoya-zukuri roof of pantiles, with an entrance porch on the north side and a bath, toilet, and covered corridor on the south. Inside is the jōdan no ma, a room with its floor raised one step, used by lords who stopped here to rest or stay the night.

Documents kept by the Ishii family record that Tenshōin Atsuhime stayed at the Yakage Honjin on her journey from Satsuma to Edo, where she was to marry the thirteenth shogun, Tokugawa Iesada. Another record notes a stop by an elephant being taken from Nagasaki to Edo to be shown to the shogun, a reminder that a honjin sometimes had to host more than people.

The Main House

The omoya, or main house, dates from the end of the Edo period into the early Meiji years. Its core is 21.4 by 9.0 meters, partly two-storied, with a hip-and-gable roof in pantiles. Wings project from it on three sides: a 13.0-meter wing to the south, a smaller wing to the west, and a small gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) block at the southeast corner. The result is no simple rectangle. Look up at the roofs from the street and the overlapping planes, set at different heights and angles, show how deep the house runs.

Brewing Storehouses and the Rear Gate

The sake storehouse is a late Edo Dozo-zukuri building 29.6 meters long and 9.9 meters deep, the longest of the eleven. It gives a better sense than anything else at the Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence of how large the family's brewing business was. The pressing shed, where fermented mash was squeezed, is a Meiji building of 5.6 by 6.9 meters, close to square, while the late Edo kōjiba, the koji room, is a slim 9.1 by 3.9 meters. Each building's shape follows its job.

The two-storied rice storehouse dates to the late Edo period and has a well house, a salt room, and a key room attached. The two-storied west storehouse was built around 1772 to 1780, making it the oldest building here with a narrowly dated construction. The inner storehouse, from the Meiji era, is gable-ended with its entrance on the gable side (Tsumairi) and has a corridor on its north face.

At the back of the lot stands the rear gate, a late Edo Nagayamon, or row-house gate, 28.3 meters long and partly two-storied. The middle gate, a two-storied Meiji building, is 10.8 meters long. Three gates on a single property, each designated, say a good deal about how many people and how much cargo passed through a house that was both an inn and a brewery.

Visiting the Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence

The interior of the Former Yakage Honjin Ishii Family Residence is open to visitors. From March to October it opens 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and from November to February 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with last entry 30 minutes before closing. It is closed on Mondays (or the following day when Monday is a public holiday) and over the New Year period.

Admission is 500 yen for adults (high school age and over) and 300 yen for elementary and junior high school students, with group rates of 400 yen and 200 yen for parties of 20 or more. The town lists the Yakage Local Art Museum (0866-82-2110) as the contact for inquiries.

The nearest station is Yakage on the Ibara Railway's Ibara Line, about a 10-minute walk away. The station sits north of the old post town; head south to the old highway and the long frontage of the Ishii Residence comes into view. By car it is about 20 minutes from Kamogata Interchange on the San'yō Expressway. Parking information differs between sources: the town's facility page says there is none, while the prefectural tourism site lists spaces, so check before driving.

We could not confirm the rules on photography inside from published sources. Ask at reception if you plan to take pictures.

The street outside is part of the Yakage-juku Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 2020. The Former Yakage Wakihonjin Takakusa Family Residence stands on the same old highway, and Yakage Town describes the pairing of a surviving honjin and waki-honjin, both Important Cultural Properties, as unique in Japan. On the second Sunday of each November, the Yakage Shukuba Festival recreates a daimyo procession through the post town.