Arai Family Residence

About the Arai Family Residence

The Arai Family Residence (新井家住宅, Arai-ke Jūtaku) is a Japanese-style country house in Nakasho, Izumisano City, Osaka Prefecture, begun in 1932, and each of its six structures was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on July 8, 1999. The six entries are the entrance and zashiki reception wing, the inner room wing, the main house, the storehouse, the gate and the wall. They carry the consecutive register numbers 27-0066 through 27-0071, and all six were registered on the same ground: they contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The client was Suekichi Arai (1864 to 1936), who made his fortune in Osaka's Senba merchant district, latterly in securities. He built the Arai Family Residence in the village where he was born, then called Kitanakadori and now part of Nakasho, as both a home for his old age and a guest house for business visitors. According to the owners' history, construction took about a year and a half.

The estate covers roughly 7,500 square meters on a low hill known locally as Tenjinyama. An irrigation pond, Shichi-no-ike, lies to the southeast, and the ground falls away westward toward Osaka Bay. The house now belongs to the fourth generation of the family and is used for tours and as a rental venue rather than as a home.

Suekichi Arai and the story of the house

The family history published by the owners traces the Arai line to the Niikawa family, long-established landholders in the old Hine district of southern Osaka, and records that the surname was first read "Nii." Suekichi left for Osaka at about 16 and tried one trade after another, including imported sundries and toys, losing his assets to fire three times during the Meiji era. His break came in the 1910s with a brokerage for telephone subscription rights, which grew into Arai Shoji and Arai Securities. Callers struggled to catch "Nii" on the telephone, the family says, so he switched the reading to "Arai."

He was about 68 when work on the Arai Family Residence began, and he meant it to double as a meeting place for Osaka's business community. A photograph kept by the family shows former prime minister Makoto Saito leaving after a visit in 1935. Suekichi died in 1936 and his eldest son, Kenji, took over the house.

In 1945 the army set up a battalion headquarters here in connection with the nearby Sano airfield, and the family records that the roof tiles were strafed about three times during the war. The house remained a family home afterward and all six structures were registered together in 1999.

A structural survey supervised by Professor Hidekazu Nishizawa of Kansai University in 2014 led to strengthening work, including seismic reinforcement. Typhoon Jebi in 2018 then tore into the roofs badly enough that the house's future was in doubt. Repairs finished in 2023, when a kitchen studio was fitted inside the main house and the reception wings opened for hire.

How the estate is laid out

Three buildings wrap around a Japanese garden in a U shape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the entrance and zashiki wing as the center, the inner room wing as the left arm and the main house as the right arm. Both reception wings run tatami corridors and open verandas along their garden sides so that the rooms look out across the planting. The main house held the family's living rooms and kitchen, and a large two-storey storehouse stands to its south, joined to it by a corridor.

An earthen wall closes the west side of the Arai Family Residence, with the gate set in its middle stretch. The gate faces a slightly bending lane at the southwest of the plot and sits back a little from the road. Step through and a pine garden opens straight ahead, with the entrance beyond it. More than 20 stone lanterns and large garden rocks are placed around the lawn, and cherry, crape myrtle and azalea mark the seasons.

• Entrance and zashiki wing: 1932, single-storey timber, hongawara tile roof, building area 181 square meters (register no. 27-0066)
• Inner room wing: 1932, single-storey timber, tiled roof, building area 120 square meters (27-0067)
• Main house: 1932, single-storey timber, tiled roof, building area 329 square meters (27-0068)
• Storehouse: 1932, two-storey earthen storehouse, hongawara tile roof, building area 126 square meters (27-0069)
• Gate: 1932, timber yakuimon gate, hongawara tile roof, building area 32 square meters (27-0070)
• Wall: 1932, tiled earthen wall, 130 meters long (27-0071)

The natural route is to look at the gate and wall from the lane, walk through into the garden, enter at the center and move from the zashiki to the inner room wing on the left. The main house and storehouse on the right formed the private side. For the wall, the Agency's database gives a length of 130 meters while the owners describe it as about 100 meters, probably because the two measure different stretches.

Visiting and getting there

The Arai Family Residence is not open on a regular basis. According to the owners' website, building tours are arranged for groups of 10 or more, Monday to Friday except public holidays. A conservation contribution of 500 yen per adult or 300 yen per student is asked, a visit lasts one to two hours, and a member of staff gives a short explanation. Requests go through the contact form on the official site, with names, contact details, preferred date and time, and group size (checked September 27, 2026).

Individual visitors should aim for the free open day held each autumn. In 2024 it ran on November 23 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with no booking needed, and the date is posted in the news section of the official site about a month in advance. The Osaka Bunkazai Navi database still lists the house as closed to visitors, but that entry dates from March 2022 and no longer reflects current practice.

The two reception wings and the kitchen studio can also be hired after a screened membership registration, for photo shoots, talks, workshops and similar events. Heavy-drinking parties and barbecues are not accepted.

The nearest stations are Izumisano on the Nankai Main Line (east exit) and Kumatori on the JR Hanwa Line (east exit). Either way the Arai Family Residence is a 20 to 25 minute walk, or 6 to 7 minutes by taxi. From Kansai International Airport a taxi takes about 20 to 25 minutes. Drivers turn southeast off National Route 26 at the Kamiyamashita intersection; the car park holds about 10 cars, and visitors are asked not to drive on the open day.