Kaname Family Residence

The Estate of a Seven-Headman Family

The Kaname Family Residence (要家住宅, Kaname-ke Jūtaku) is the walled estate of a hereditary village headman family in Hatakenaka 2-chome, Kaizuka, Osaka Prefecture, where eleven Edo-period buildings and walls, the oldest a detached study hall dated 1738, were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 28, 2017. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 27-0682 to 27-0692. The family still lives here, and the grounds are closed to visitors.

The Kaname traced their line to the local gentry-warriors of the medieval period. Under the Tokugawa order they served generation after generation as shōya, or village headmen, of Hatakenaka, and also took charge of neighboring Kōzaki village. In 1600 Koide Hidemasa, then lord of Kishiwada, issued a sealed document excusing the family from levies on 100 koku of its landholdings. Later lords of the Matsudaira and Okabe houses kept honoring that exemption.

The decisive promotion came in 1789, when Kaname Gendayū joined the Kishiwada domain's "Seven Headmen" (shichinin jōya). This was an unusual institution. Rather than each senior headman supervising his own district, as in most domains, the seven met together at an office inside Kishiwada Castle and deliberated on matters touching all of the domain's roughly 108 villages. The Kaname held that seat until the Meiji Restoration.

By the measure of rice yield, the Kaname villages were modest: Hatakenaka and Kōzaki together came to just over 520 koku, well below the other villages ranked alongside them. Kaizuka City's account notes the comparison and then points back to the 100-koku exemption, still in force generations later. Standing, in other words, was measured by more than acreage.

A Compound About 90 Metres Across

The Kaname Family Residence occupies a lot roughly 90 metres on each side, ringed by earthen walls capped with interlocking hongawara tile. The Front Nagayamon Gate stands at the middle of the south side. Sources differ slightly on compass points: the Agency for Cultural Affairs database places the gate on the south face, while Kaizuka City's description calls it the center of the southeast side, most likely because the lot is set at an angle to true north.

The main house sits near the middle of the lot and is not among the eleven registered structures. Attached to its west side (southwest, in the city's wording) is the Front Shoin, the formal reception wing. The Detached Shoin stands to the north with the Inner Storehouse beside it, and farther northeast three more storehouses, the Kanenoto, the Michi and the Utensil Storehouse, face one another around a U-shaped yard.

The gates are arranged in stages. The Front Nagayamon Gate has two openings, a formal gate leading to the Front Shoin and a kitchen gate leading to the main house. Behind it, joined at a right angle to form a T, the Inner Nagayamon Gate separates the path of an honored guest from the daily traffic of the household. The Middle Gate, attached to the west end of the Front Shoin, divides the forecourt from the main garden, and from its far end the Garden Gate and Wall run north to screen the inner garden beyond.

Pass through each gate and the character of the space shifts: public ceremony, then the working household, then a private garden. It is this sequence, preserved whole, that gives the estate its weight.

Eleven Listings, Two Criteria

The eleven listed structures are the Front Shoin, the Detached Shoin, the Inner Storehouse, the Kanenoto Storehouse, the Michi Storehouse, the Utensil Storehouse, the Front and Inner Nagayamon Gates, the Middle Gate, the Garden Gate and Wall, and the Earthen Wall. Only the Detached Shoin carries a firm date; the others are assigned more broadly to the middle, later or final decades of the Edo period. The Front Shoin, the Michi Storehouse and the Utensil Storehouse were repaired during the Heisei era.

Registration followed two different criteria. Four structures, the two shoin halls and the two nagayamon gates, were listed as models of architectural form. The other seven were listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, in other words as parts of an ensemble rather than as exemplars in their own right.

Kaizuka City stresses that nearly every principal building apart from the main house dates from the Edo period, so the full layout of a Seven Headmen estate can still be read on the ground. Complete sets of reception halls, storehouses, gates and walls surviving together in their original places are rare.

When the Lord Came Fishing

On hunting trips through his territory, the lord of Kishiwada would sometimes stop at a Seven Headmen house to rest or take a meal. These visits, called onari, were recorded with pride, and the Kaname family papers preserve several of them.

In the spring of 1726, the diary records, the young lord Okabe Nagaakira, then 15 by the traditional count, fished the garden pond at the Kaname estate and landed 170 crucian carp in a single day. He returned four more times by the sixth day of the fourth month, adding carp and eels to the tally.

The formal side of the Kaname Family Residence was built with such visits in mind. The Front Nagayamon Gate contains rooms set aside for the lord's arrival, the Front Shoin receives guests through a broad Shikidai entrance step, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Middle Gate as prepared for the lord's visits. Yet the Front Shoin omits the decorative nageshi rails expected in a room of its rank, in deference to a lord who prized frugality. Rank and restraint sit side by side in the same facade.

Visiting and Getting There

The Kaname Family Residence is a private home. Neither the buildings nor the grounds are open, and no public viewing days are announced by the city or the owners (checked September 25, 2026). What can be seen from outside is chiefly the Front Nagayamon Gate on the street side and the long earthen walls. Please do not step through the gates or peer over the walls into the living quarters.

The nearest station is Kaizuka-Shiyakusho-mae on the Mizuma Railway, about 700 metres northeast of the estate in a straight line. From Nishikinohama Station on the Nankai Main Line the estate lies about 900 metres to the northeast. Either walk takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes along the streets. The area is residential, with no visitor parking.

To see the inside of a Seven Headmen house, visit the Naka family residence in neighboring Kumatori, home of another member of the same council, which is run as a public facility. Seen after the Kaname walls and gates, it helps fill in what lies behind them.