Former Nakamura Family Residence (Omanocho, Koshigaya)

About the Former Nakamura Family Residence

The Former Nakamura Family Residence (旧中村家住宅, Kyū-Nakamura-ke Jūtaku) is the homestead of the Nakamura family, village heads of old Ōmano village, in Ōmano-chō, Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture; its six buildings, from an 1886 gatehouse to an early Shōwa stone storehouse, were entered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on October 14, 2021.

Koshigaya City owns the estate and opens it as a preserved farmhouse under the name Ōmano-chō Former Nakamura Family Residence (大間野町旧中村家住宅). The family gave the property to the city in 1997, and the buildings were restored to their original appearance. Nothing was relocated. The gate, the house and the storehouses stand exactly where the Nakamuras built them, still ringed by the belt of trees that sheltered the homestead.

Koshigaya has a second Nakamura house open to visitors, the Former Higashikata Village Nakamura Family Residence, which the city protects under its own ordinance. The names are close, but it is a different site with a different history.

A village headman's homestead

Under the Tokugawa shogunate the Nakamuras served as nanushi, the headmen who answered for Ōmano village. A family tradition, retold in the city's leaflet, traces them to a retainer of Konishi Yukinaga, a general on the Toyotomi side. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the story goes, the family went over to the Tokugawa, moved east into the Kantō plain and opened up this land. It is a household legend rather than documented history, but it shows how a headman's family accounted for its standing.

None of the surviving buildings is that old. The gatehouse dates to 1886, the barn to 1888, the earthen storehouse to 1894 and the main house to 1914; the small Mitakesha shrine belongs to the early Taishō period and the stone storehouse to the early Shōwa period. Put in order, the dates show a family rebuilding its compound piece by piece, gate first, then stores, then the house and its guardian shrine.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, restoration work was carried out on the two storehouses in 2001 and on the main house, barn and gatehouse in 2003. The city says craftsmen used traditional techniques that are now disappearing and reused old timber wherever they could. Several of the buildings now display everyday tools and records of the Nakamura family.

How the estate is laid out

You enter the Former Nakamura Family Residence through the Nagayamon, a long gatehouse set in the middle of the south boundary, with flanking walls running off to east and west. Straight ahead, a little north of centre, the main house faces south across an open yard.

The other buildings are arranged around it: the stone storehouse to the southeast, the barn to the northeast, the earthen storehouse to the northwest and the Mitakesha shrine to the west. An easy loop runs from the gate into the main house, east past the stone storehouse and the barn, round the back to the earthen storehouse, and out to the shrine on the west side.

The leaflet's site plan also marks what is no longer there. A further storehouse, known as the West Storehouse, stood on the west side until some point between 1975 and 1984. The family's fields once spread around the homestead, and the tree belt, the plan notes, was there to break the seasonal winds.

• Nagayamon Gate, 1886 (registration no. 11-0212)
• Main House, 1914 (registration no. 11-0207)
• Stone Storehouse, early Shōwa period (registration no. 11-0210)
• Barn, 1888 (registration no. 11-0208)
• Storehouse, 1894 (registration no. 11-0209)
• Mitakesha Shrine, early Taishō period (registration no. 11-0211)

Two of the six, the earthen storehouse and the shrine, were registered as buildings that serve as a model of design; the other four were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. Each counts as one building, six in all.

Visiting and getting there

The Former Nakamura Family Residence is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m. It is closed on Mondays (or the next weekday when Monday is a public holiday) and from December 29 to January 3. Admission is 100 yen for adults and 50 yen for elementary and junior high school students; children below school age enter free. These details were checked against the city's facility page on September 25, 2026.

About ten times a year some rooms are closed for school field trips and events, and the main house was shut for repair work from January 21, 2025, reopening on April 1, 2025. If there is a room you particularly want to see, call ahead (048-985-9750). The city's facility page says nothing either way about photography, so ask at reception before photographing the exhibits.

The nearest station is Gamō on the Tōbu Skytree Line, about 15 minutes on foot from the west exit. Drivers can use the car park inside the grounds (6 spaces), a lot beside the entrance on the east side (about 7) or an overflow lot in Ōmano-chō 2-chōme (20). Bicycles can be left inside the grounds, where there is also a rack for sports bikes.