Asano Family Residence Main House

What the Asano Family Residence Main House Is

The Asano Family Residence Main House (浅野家住宅主屋, Asano-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a late Edo-period townhouse, built between 1830 and 1867, in Kyuhoji 5-chome, Yao City, Osaka Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 8 November 2004. It is the central building of the five that make up the Asano estate, standing along the north edge of the plot with its front to the street.

It measures 7 by 5 bays and covers 134 square metres. The gabled roof, Kirizuma-zukuri, is laid in Hongawarabuki, the heavy tiling of alternating round and flat tiles, and the entrance is on the long side under the eaves, the arrangement called Hirairi. A secondary eave of lighter Sangawara-buki tiles runs across the street front. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the structure as single-storey, yet its own description calls it Tsushi-nikai: a low upper floor used for storage, which from the street makes the house look two storeys high.

For a closer date, an explanatory board by the Yao City Board of Education reports that a prayer tablet of 1848, the first year of the Kaei era, was found in the Asano Family Residence Main House. That sits comfortably inside the Agency's late Edo bracket.

Why It Was Registered

The house was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency notes that apart from alterations around the main door, the ground-floor projecting lattice and the mushiko-mado of the upper floor survive in good condition. In other words, it is the street front, still showing its late Edo proportions to the lanes of the temple town, that carries the case.

The plan is the other point. Roughly half the length of the building is given to an earth-floored Doma, and the rest holds four rooms arranged in a square, what Japanese architectural historians call a yomadori layout. The Agency describes it as a farmhouse-type plan. So the face is a townhouse, with lattice and slit windows, while the body behind it is a farmhouse. That split is the thing to keep in mind when reading the Asano Family Residence Main House.

The Yao City Board of Education board describes the house as keeping the building style of its day and counts it among the oldest townhouses in Kyuhoji.

What to Look For

Standing in front, first separate the two roofs. The main roof behind is hongawara, with rows of rounded cover tiles over flat ones; the lower eave in front is sangawara, a single S-profiled tile doing both jobs. The rhythm of the tile ends along the eaves changes from one level to the other.

The ground-floor lattice projects slightly from the wall face. Above it, the mushiko-mado are small openings with narrow vertical bars modelled in plaster, and their height and size give away how low the tsushi upper floor really is.

The Agency is explicit that the main door has been altered. Look past the newer joinery at the entrance to the lattice on either side and the windows above, and the proportions of the late Edo front come through.

The Inui Storehouse just to the west belongs to the same period. Seen together with the front of the Asano Family Residence Main House, the townhouse and the white-walled storehouse form a single continuous frontage along the lane.

Visiting

The Asano Family Residence Main House is a private home and the interior is not open (checked 27 September 2026). What you can see is the street front facing north, which makes it the easiest of the five buildings to view from the road.

Keep photography to the exterior from the public street and avoid shooting through the lattice into the rooms.