Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House

What the Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House Is

The Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House (永瀬昌文家住宅主屋) is a two-storey wooden house of about 1938 in Honmachi 1-chome, Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 March 2019. The building area is 202 square metres. It stands in the middle of central Kawaguchi as the home of a foundry family.

The house faces south under a hip-and-gable roof, Irimoya-zukuri, laid with pantiles, Sangawara-buki. At the eastern end of that front, however, a separate wing pushes forward, gabled and roofed in Western tile. A Japanese body with a Western element projecting from it: that is the shape of the Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House as seen from the street.

Inside, living rooms occupy the ground floor and a guest room the upper floor, while the projecting wing holds a Western entrance hall and a drawing room. Reception is routed through the Western side and family life kept on the Japanese side, a division common in Japanese city houses of the prewar Showa years.

Why It Was Listed

The Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House was listed for its contribution to the historic character of the landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry says it conveys the historic character of a Kawaguchi townscape built on the casting industry. The listing rests on what the house shows about the making of the city rather than on the design of the building alone.

Kawaguchi has cast iron since at least the end of the Muromachi period, and by the Edo period the foundry masters had gathered here into one of Japan's principal casting districts. The Arakawa and Shibakawa rivers supplied sand and clay suited to moulds, and Edo, the largest market in the country, was close at hand. So many Kawaguchi casters bore the surname Nagase that households were customarily distinguished by shop names instead.

The date of about 1938 carries meaning too. Kawaguchi had been a city for only a few years, and its foundries had already moved to modern factory production. What a works owner built for himself in the town centre was this: two storeys, Japanese and Western combined. The scale and bearing of the house record the standard of living that came with the trade.

What to Look For

The projecting wing at the east end of the front is the thing to see. The main body carries a hip-and-gable pantile roof descended from the Japanese farmhouse tradition. Against it, a gabled volume in glazed Western tile steps forward. Matt grey pantile beside glossy Western tile, a broad hip-and-gable beside a taut gable end: two roof temperaments meeting on one elevation.

How they meet matters as well. The wing is not set alongside the main body but thrust forward from it, and because the entrance is there, the Western part is what a passer-by registers first. The Japanese body is held back; the Western face is put in front.

Placing the guest room upstairs also tells you something. Taking visitors up is a way of buying floor area on a tight urban plot, and it leaves the ground floor to the family. Read together with a footprint of 202 square metres, the plan shows a household making vertical use of a restricted site in the middle of town.

Visiting

The Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House is a private home and the interior is closed. No public opening or booking arrangement could be confirmed (checked 13 September 2026). The building cannot be entered.

What remains is the exterior from the public road. Since the house fronts south, the road on that side gives the clearest reading of the relationship between the hip-and-gable main body and the Western wing pushed forward at the east end. It is also the best side from which to compare the two roof coverings.

No notice prohibiting photography was found, but the house is occupied. Keep to the exterior from the road, and keep the lens away from the gate interior and the windows. These are residential streets, so stand clear of the footway and do not linger.

Getting there means Kawaguchi Station on the JR Keihin-Tohoku Line. Honmachi 1-chome, where the Nagase Masafumi Family Residence Main House stands, lies east of the station, about 10 minutes on foot. Kawaguchi-Motogo Station on the Saitama Railway is also within walking distance. There is no visitor parking.

Two addresses circulate. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records the site as Honmachi 1-chome 100, while the Kawaguchi City list of cultural properties gives the residential-display address as Honmachi 1-8-6. For a map search, the second one works.