Kusudo Family Residence

Kusudo Family Residence: A Meiji Kimono Merchant's House in Higashimachi

The Kusudo Family Residence (楠戸家住宅, Kusudo-ke Jūtaku) is the shop and home of the Hashimaya kimono store in Higashimachi, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture, and four parts of the estate laid out in the mid-Meiji period, the rice storehouse, charcoal storehouse, tool storehouse and wall, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on December 20, 1996.

The Kusudo family opened their kimono business in 1869. For a trademark they took the character "to" from the name of the founder, Kusudo Tokukichi, and drew a circle around it. In 1906 the business became a partnership company, and the shop on the street still sells bolts of kimono cloth today.

The house stands on Higashimachi's main street, just east of the Kurashiki Bikan Historical Quarter and at the southern foot of Mount Tsurugata. The street follows an old highway, and it is far quieter than the canal district a few minutes' walk away. Machiya townhouses and Meiji-era buildings line both sides, and the white walls and tiled roofs of the Kusudo Family Residence run along a good stretch of it.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

Like many merchant plots in Kurashiki, the Kusudo Family Residence is narrow at the front and runs a long way back; the family puts its area at about 1,200 tsubo. The shop faces the street. Behind it, across a courtyard garden and an entrance hall, come the family's living rooms, and beyond them the formal reception room known as the okuzashiki. Separating the shop from the living quarters with a garden in between is called omoteya-zukuri, a plan used by large Kyoto merchant houses and regarded as one of the mature forms of the Machiya.

The family says the main house was designed by a man from Kyoto and built by carpenters from Nara between 1882 and 1887. Kurashiki City describes the present shop front more cautiously as having taken shape in the mid-Meiji period.

On the upper floor of the shop are three mushiko-mado, slit windows whose frames and bars are coated entirely in Shikkui plaster. Below them runs a projecting lattice of the local type called Kurashiki-goshi. The mushiko-mado came from the townhouses of Kyoto and Osaka and reached Kurashiki only in the Meiji period, so the facade layers a touch of Kansai refinement over the older local style.

The three registered storehouses stand in a line behind the main house. The tool storehouse adjoins the okuzashiki, the charcoal storehouse comes next, and the long rice storehouse closes the plot at the very back. The family calls this row the sandan-gura, or three-step storehouses. The charcoal storehouse, together with the okuzashiki and the rice storehouse, encloses an inner garden, and a roofed wall runs down the western boundary. On the east side a stone-paved lane leads back to the rice storehouse, a reminder of the days when the Kusudo family, as landowners, had rent rice carted in by their tenant farmers.

The British potter Bernard Leach visited in 1953 and in his travel notes remarked on the seven storehouses lined up at the back. Three of them are on the national register today.

Registration in the System's First Year

Japan's registration system for historic buildings came into force on October 1, 1996, through an amendment to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. On December 20 of that year, in the very first round of registrations, the Kusudo Family Residence was entered in the national register. The family and local media describe it as Okayama Prefecture's first registered building. The four entries carry registration numbers 33-0002 to 33-0005, and each was registered under the criterion that it would not be easy to reproduce.

The main house was registered on the same day. On February 20, 2002, the shop, entrance and middle reception-room sections of the main house were designated a cultural property by Kurashiki City, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs' list of cancelled registrations shows the main house's national registration ending on that date because of the city designation. Kurashiki City's own page, however, still shows the okuzashiki section of the main house as nationally registered, so the two sources do not agree.

The structure and highlights of the rice storehouse, charcoal storehouse, tool storehouse and wall are covered on their own pages.

Giving the Storehouses a New Life

Registration prompted the family to look for ways to let people use the buildings. According to Kurashiki City's tourism site, they began by fitting out a storehouse as a cafe, added a gallery in 2005, and in 2007 restored another storehouse for a tenant. Their view is simple: a building survives when people go in and use it.

Today the rice storehouse houses atelier & salon Hashimaya, a salon built around fermented foods, and the tool storehouse serves as its kitchen. A Western-style room in the main house opens as the Art Space Hashimaya gallery during exhibitions, and unregistered storehouses hold tenants such as a furniture showroom.

Visiting the Kusudo Family Residence

The Kusudo Family Residence is still a working shop and family home, and the interior of the main house and its tea room are not open to the public except during events, which the family announces on its website. The courtyard holds a satsuki azalea said to be about 250 years old. From 1993 until the start of the pandemic, the family opened the main house each year from late May to early June, when the azalea was in bloom, for the Hashimaya Satsuki Exhibition.

The exterior is what you can always see. The mushiko-mado and lattice of the shop front and the street end of the boundary wall are in full view from Higashimachi's main street. Of the storehouses, the rice storehouse can be reached along the stone-paved lane on the east side of the plot when the salon is open.

From JR Kurashiki Station it is a 15 to 20 minute walk. By bus, take the Shimoden Amaki Line from stop 6 at the station's south exit to Higashimachi, then walk about 3 minutes; or take the Ryobi Kurashiki Loop Line from stop 3 to Ohara Museum of Art and walk about 7 minutes. There is no dedicated parking, so drivers should use one of the pay car parks nearby.

No official rules on photography have been published. Because this is a lived-in house, take pictures from the street in a way that does not block the shop door or the gate.