Nakano Family Residence Main House

Three Wings Built for Guests and Teaching

Nakano Family Residence Main House (中野家住宅主屋, Nakano-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a house in Ifuku, Tara Town, Saga Prefecture, built in 1909 and extended in the Taishō era (1912–1926), and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 2 May 2017. It is a timber house of 2 storeys with single-storey sections under tiled roofs, covering 462 square metres.

It is not one block but three: a main wing, a reception wing and a storage wing, linked by a corridor 1 Ken wide, roughly the span of a tatami mat's length. Each wing has its own job, and the corridor ties them together.

Of the six registered parts of the Nakano Family Residence, the Main House is the only building; the rest are the gateposts, the stone wall and the waterworks.

Why It Was Registered

The Nakano Family Residence Main House was registered under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of design. Its five companions were registered for their contribution to the landscape; the house alone was judged on its design.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs points to three things. The first is the Shikidai entrance of the main wing, dressed with a carved tie beam and Kaerumata frog-leg struts. The second is the reception wing, which holds both a traditional formal room and one where the Tokonoma alcove is raised to waist height for people seated on chairs. The third is the plan as a whole, arranged for receiving guests and for teaching, which the Agency reads as a modern development of the Japanese house.

A waist-high alcove is set for the eye level of someone on a chair rather than someone kneeling on tatami. It is a small, telling adjustment: a formal Japanese room reshaped around a new habit of sitting, typical of houses of the late Meiji and Taishō years.

Nakano Maki's House

According to Saga University, this is where Nakano Maki (中野万亀, 1872–1949) ran an evening school for women and a residential household school, the Nakano Katei-ryō, and opened a crèche in the busy farming seasons. A graduate of the women's division of Saga Prefectural Normal School, she was one of the first women in the prefecture to hold a full teaching licence.

The Agency's remark about a plan designed for teaching fits that history. Guests were received at the formal entrance, and people gathered in the reception wing. The Nakano Family Residence Main House was a family home and, at the same time, a place of learning for the district.

Visiting the Main House

The Nakano Family Residence Main House is a private home kept by the Nakano family and is not open to the public. The grounds cannot be entered, and the entrance hall and formal rooms can be seen only at special events held with the owners' cooperation, such as the study visit organised by Saga University and others in February 2025.

If you pass by, view it from the public road only and do not disturb the household. No policy on photography has been published. The history of the estate as a whole is set out on the Nakano Family Residence page.