Former Konishi Family Residence

Three Buildings, an Important Cultural Property since 2001

Former Konishi Family Residence (旧小西家住宅, Konishi-ke Jutaku) stands at 1-6-9 Doshomachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture, listed as an Important Cultural Property on 15 June 2001. The listing is as an Important Cultural Property, not a National Treasure, and the owner is Konishi Co., Ltd.

Three buildings are listed: the main house, the clothing storehouse and the two-storey storehouse. Each counts as one.

The Agency records that the Konishi family were merchants, beginning when the first Gisuke came from Kyoto to Doshomachi in Osaka in 1856 and founded a business in medicinal goods under the shop name Konishiya.

The Reading Omits the Word for Former

Name and reading differ by one word.

The name reads Former Konishi Family Residence. The reading field, however, gives only Konishi-ke Jutaku.

The word for former appears in the name but not in the reading.

At Ochidani Shrine, the name of the cultural property and the owner's name disagreed. That falls between two different fields.

Here the disagreement falls between the name field and its own reading field, two that should match.

The word for former marks that the building is no longer lived in. It now serves as a historical archive.

The Land Is Preserved Along with the Buildings

What is protected reaches beyond the buildings themselves.

The Agency closes that the main house and storehouses survive together, keeping the whole layout of a large late-Meiji merchant establishment, and that the site including the rear garden is to be preserved along with them.

The site including the rear garden, in those words. The ground itself is named beside the buildings.

At Kobe College, a campus plan mindful of the lie of the plateau and the natural setting entered into the assessment. That concerns an approach to layout.

At the Yatsusawa power station, structures spread across some fourteen kilometres, stated as a matter of scale.

Here the record says the site with its garden is to be preserved together with the buildings. The phrase about the whole layout of the establishment carries that.

Nine Years Between the Main House and the Clothing Storehouse

The three buildings do not share a year.

The main house, the record says, was built by the second Gisuke over three years from 1900, which puts its completion at 1903.

The date field gives about 1903 for the main house and for the two-storey storehouse alike.

The clothing storehouse, however, had its ridgepole raised in 1912, and is of three storeys in earthen-walled construction.

Nine years after the main house. The period field reads Meiji for all three, but the years lie apart.

At the Ishitani residence, the main house was Showa and the storehouses Taisho, the era divisions themselves differing. Here the years differ within one era. The two-storey storehouse is taken to date from the same time as the main house, and those two agree.

Visiting

The buildings stand at 1-6-9 Doshomachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka City, owned by Konishi Co., Ltd.

The Yatsusawa power station belongs to an electric company and the Yoichi distillery to a whisky company. This belongs to a company known for adhesives.

In each case buildings tied to a firm's founding or its trade have become cultural properties while remaining in the firm's hands.

The structure is described: the main house faces south onto Doshomachi street and is a townhouse of the front-shop type, with a shop building at the front and living quarters behind. It is timber, 462.4 square metres, two-storeyed, pantiled.

The two-storey storehouse is earthen-walled, 52.1 square metres, two-storeyed, tiled. The assessment reads that even along Doshomachi, where merchants in medicinal goods stood side by side, this was an exceptionally large establishment, and that it sums up the townhouse of modern Osaka in the Japanese manner. It serves as a historical archive, and visits follow the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.