Kimura Family Residence Main House

The Kimura Family Residence Main House

The Kimura Family Residence Main House (木村家住宅主屋, Kimura-ke Jūtaku Omoya) is a late Edo-period (1751 to 1830) cotton merchant's town house in Higashihonmachi, Yao City, Osaka Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 24 June 2021. It stands in the middle of the Kimura estate facing north onto the street, with a building area of 204 square meters, a gabled pantiled roof over a low Tsushi-nikai upper floor, and a wall attached to its front.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records renovations in 1961 and 1983. The house was listed for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and the Agency describes it as a fine surviving town house of a merchant family that made its fortune in Kawachi cotton.

Inside the Main House: an earth-floored hall and six rooms

The plan splits in two. The east side is the Doma, the earth-floored working area where goods and people came in from the street. The west side is raised and floored, with six rooms in two rows of three. In the western row the front, middle and rear reception rooms follow one another back from the street, so the best rooms were also the most private.

The survey prepared for the registration, published by Yao City, gives the house as 7 bays by 5 bays: three bays of earth floor and four of rooms. The earth-floored area once ran front, middle and rear in a single line from the north entrance; the front and middle sections survive. Above the front section is the tsushi-nikai loft, and a great central post, the daikokubashira, stands at the east end of the partition between the front and middle rooms.

A corridor runs along the garden side of the rear rooms and leads on to the tea room. The storehouse adjoins the west side of the Kimura Family Residence Main House through a short passage.

Dating the Main House from a prayer tablet and old plans

No record gives a construction date. The survey turns instead to a prayer tablet kept in the house, issued for a fire rite at Taga Taisha shrine in Omi and dated 1852, which shows the house was repaired that year.

The family's plan of about 1842 and its measured plan of about 1905 show almost the same layout, so the 1852 work cannot have been a major rebuilding, and the house must already have existed. The survey suggests it went up under the eleventh Shobei, who died in 1781 after expanding the estate and opening new farmland, or the twelfth, who died in 1784 having put the cotton wholesale business on a firm footing. That would make the Kimura Family Residence Main House a building of the late 18th century.

Some rooms were floored over with boards in the Showa era and the rear of the earth-floored area was refitted as a kitchen, yet the survey judges the house well preserved overall.

Seeing the Kimura Family Residence Main House

The interior is not open to the public at present. What you can see is the north front from the street.

A lean-to roof runs across the front. The entrance is toward the east end and a projecting wooden lattice, a Degōshi, fills the west side. The low upper wall of the loft is pierced by lattice windows, the low profile typical of an Edo-period town house. A wall continues from the east end, and the white walls of the storehouse line up to the west. Stand on the far side of the street to take in the house and storehouse together.

Yao City, the owner, has published no guidance on photography. Keep to the street, photograph only the exterior and be mindful of the neighbors. Directions and the city's plans for the estate are on the Kimura Family Residence page.