Katagiri Seiryudo

A Kampo Pharmacy on Land Said to Come from Hideyoshi

Katagiri Seiryudo (片桐棲龍堂, Katagiri Seiryūdō) is a long-established kampo pharmacy and family residence in Nishiminatocho, Sakai Ward, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, where a main house of the Bunka era (1804 to 1817) and six further structures each became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 18 October 2000. The family still lives here, and the shop still sells medicine.

Kampo is the Japanese school of herbal medicine that grew out of Chinese practice and was reshaped in Japan over centuries. Katagiri Seiryudo belongs to the small group of households that practised it as physicians first and only later became pharmacists.

The property sits in a narrow band of old Sakai between Nakasuji, the lane one block east of the former Kishu Kaido highway, and the tracks of the Hankai Line tramway. This was Minato village in the Edo period. Most of Sakai's historic core burned in the air raids of the Second World War, but this district came through, and shrines, temples and houses from the late Edo period still stand scattered along its lanes.

The family's own account of its origins is ambitious. It holds that Toyotomi Hideyoshi granted the land, that the household settled here in the Momoyama period, and that the business began in 1593. Successive heads took the name Kanryu, which gave the house its name: Seiryudo can be read as the hall where a dragon dwells, and the family adds that the site stands on a dragon vein in the sense of geomancy. These are family traditions, not dates confirmed by contemporary records.

Firmer ground comes later. In the Edo period members of the family served as physicians to the Kishiwada domain and the Hakata domain in Izumi, and treated neighbours without charge. After the Meiji reforms to the drug laws they obtained licences to make and sell their household remedies, and the practice shifted from doctoring to dispensing. The present shop combines Japanese kampo with Chinese traditional formulations.

Seven Registered Structures and How They Fit Together

The seven are the Main House, the West Storehouse, the Middle Storehouse, the East Storehouse, the Washing Area, the Brick Wall and the Marishisonten Shrine Sanctuary. They carry consecutive registration numbers, 27-0106 to 27-0112, and were entered on the same day. Between them they cover everything a merchant-physician's compound needed: a dwelling, three earthen-walled storehouses, a covered work space, a screening wall and a small household shrine.

Building dates span more than half a century. The oldest layer is the Bunka-era Main House and the shrine sanctuary of about 1814. The Middle and East Storehouses are said to date from the Kaei era (1848 to 1853). The West Storehouse was built in the late Edo period in Nipponbashi, in the commercial heart of Osaka, and moved here in 1873. The Washing Area and the Brick Wall are early Meiji work that joins the two Kaei storehouses under one roof and one line of brick.

The layout is easiest to follow from the Main House outward. The West Storehouse stands to its west, across the approach path into the property. The Middle Storehouse lies to the north-east of the house, and the East Storehouse further east again; the Washing Area spans the gap between their gable ends. The Brick Wall closes the south side of the Washing Area, running west from the south-west corner of the East Storehouse. The shrine sanctuary sits in the north-east corner of the garden, facing west.

The registrations fall under two criteria. The Middle and East Storehouses were listed as exemplary of their type; the other five were listed as difficult to reproduce. In other words, the two Kaei storehouses were valued as clear examples of a standard form, while the rest, including a relocated storehouse and Meiji brickwork, were valued because they could not easily be made again.

The gardens are protected too. The zashiki garden east of the Main House and the entrance and courtyard gardens to its west are designated by Sakai City as a Place of Scenic Beauty: the zashiki and courtyard gardens in 2010, the entrance garden in 2023. Restoration work in the zashiki garden uncovered a waiting bench and a sand privy, fixtures of the tea ceremony, revealing that its artificial hills and dry waterfall had been laid out as a Roji, the path garden leading to a tearoom. Sakai City describes it as a rare surviving tea garden of a late Edo physician's house, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs identifies it with the Yabunouchi school of tea. The East Storehouse and the shrine sanctuary stand on its northern edge and in its north-east corner.

Visiting and Getting There

Katagiri Seiryudo is a private home and a working pharmacy. Sakai City asks visitors to view the buildings from outside only, and the gardens are not open to the public. The kampo museum housed in the West Storehouse is also closed to general visitors, and the Osaka Cultural Properties Navi lists the site as not open for viewing. There is no way to walk through the compound and compare the seven structures side by side.

The pharmacy opens from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and closes on Sundays, public holidays and the first and third Saturdays of the month, according to the Sakai Tourism and Convention Bureau. It is a shop for consultations and medicine, not a reception desk for architectural visits, and should be approached that way.

No rules on photography have been published. Keep to the public street, and avoid pointing a camera at the windows of the house or at customers.

By tram, take the Hankai Line to Goryomae and walk south along Nakasuji. From Minato Station on the Nankai Main Line the walk takes about 10 minutes. Nankai buses on the Minami Loop stop at Higashiminato 3-cho, from where the pharmacy lies a short way to the west. A private car park for 4 cars serves pharmacy customers; the lanes around it are narrow and used by children and elderly residents, so drive with care.