Omori Family Residence

What is the Omori Family Residence?

The Omori Family Residence (大盛家住宅, Ōmori-ke Jūtaku) is a homestead in the village of Kohama on Kohama Island, Taketomi Town, Okinawa Prefecture, built around a main house of 1915, and its main house, hinpun screen wall, stone wall and well were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan on August 3, 2006.

All four entries share the lot number 15 Kohama and carry the consecutive registration numbers 47-0018 to 47-0021. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates every one of them to 1915, so the red-tiled house and the stonework around it are recorded as a single phase of building. The registration was published in the official gazette on August 24, 2006, and some guides quote that later date instead.

All four were registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. In its note on the hinpun, the agency calls the wall an element the homestead could not do without, which says a good deal about how the Omori compound was judged: as a complete household layout rather than as one fine building.

How the Omori Homestead Is Laid Out

The plot slopes gently down to the south. The main house sits close to its center and faces south, toward the front gateway.

A dry stone wall of coral limestone, 65 meters in all, wraps around the south, west and north sides. A 2-meter opening in the middle of the south wall serves as the front gateway, and a smaller side gate opens farther west.

Step through the front gateway and a freestanding stone screen blocks the view about 4 meters in front of the house. This is the hinpun, a feature found across Okinawa that keeps passers-by from looking straight into the home. Visitors walk around one end of it to reach the door.

The well lies just inside the south wall, southwest of the hinpun, with a stone washing floor around it. Gateway, screen and house line up on a north-south axis, with the water source set off to one side, and that arrangement can be read from the lane outside.

A Village House Known from Television

The Omori Family Residence stands in Kohama village, the settlement near the middle of the island, and it is still a private home.

According to Taketomi Town, the house was used as a filming location for the NHK morning drama "Churasan," where it played Kohagura-so, the guesthouse run by the heroine's family. Fans of the drama still come to look, but the house is visited on the same terms as any other private home.

Long before that, the front rooms of the Omori main house served as a meeting place for the local community, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs. It is a family home that has also done duty for the village.

Visiting the Omori Family Residence

The Omori Family Residence is a private home, and Taketomi Town's tourism site says it can be viewed only from outside. The grounds are closed to visitors. The town also asks visitors to Kohama and the other islands not to peer into private yards and not to fly drones over homes.

The stone wall and the red tiled roof of the main house can be seen from the lane. From the front gateway you look straight at the hinpun; keep photography brief and avoid lingering at the opening, since people live here.

Kohama Island is reached by high-speed boat from the Ishigaki Port Remote Island Terminal on Ishigaki Island. Taketomi Town lists about 9 sailings a day with a crossing of about 30 minutes, operated by Anei Kanko and Yaeyama Kanko Ferry. Timetables differ between summer and winter.

The Omori Family Residence is about 6 minutes by car from Kohama Port. For getting around the island the town lists rental bicycles, rental scooters, rental cars, tour buses and walking. There is no parking for visitors.