Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building

What the Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building Is

The Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building (永瀬孝男家住宅洋館) is a two-storey wooden house of about 1922 in Honmachi 1-chome, Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 March 2019. It stands at the centre of the estate facing south, with the Japanese-style building joined to its east and the storehouse to its west. Building area is 188 square metres.

The roof is a steeply pitched gable, Kirizuma-zukuri, covered not in Japanese pantiles but in Western tile. A porch projects at the centre of the front. According to the history published by the owner, that entrance has no earth-floored step-down for removing shoes. It was planned for an American way of living, shoes on indoors, so although the building physically joins the Japanese wing, it treats floor level and footwear as another building entirely.

It was not built to be lived in. The Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building went up as a reception house for Nagase Torakichi, who had taken over the family foundry and later served as mayor of Kawaguchi City. Business and political visitors needed somewhere to be received. The owner's history names the architect as Yui Chiyo and says the scheme drew on a house competition design published in an American architectural magazine.

Why It Was Listed

The Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building was listed under the criterion for work that sets a standard in design. Of the seven structures on the estate, it is the only one listed on that ground; the other six qualified for their contribution to the historic character of the landscape. It was judged on the quality of the architecture, not merely as one component of an old estate.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry points to the German-render walls and tall narrow windows that set the exterior, and to the Secession manner of the porch and the interior detailing, as showing the taste of a Taisho-era Western house. The Secession was the design movement that began in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, marked by restrained curves and a geometric handling of line and plane. This is a Japanese suburban house taking up that vocabulary while it was still current.

The owner's history sets it in a wider frame. Western-style houses built around an American pattern of living began appearing in the suburbs of Tokyo from about 1916, and this Kawaguchi house shows that fashion travelling outward from the capital. Its position lies in that combination: next door to Tokyo, and paid for by a local casting industry.

What to Look For

Start with the wall. German render is a finish in which the mortar surface is roughened while still workable, so the face carries a coarse texture that reads differently as the light moves across it. The owner's history notes that pebbles were mixed into the mortar of this exterior. Anyone expecting the smooth stucco of a picture-book Western house finds a much rougher surface.

The windows are tall and narrow. Set beside the wide horizontal openings of the Japanese wing, they let you compare two window conventions under a single eaves line. That junction is the clearest thing to look for on the Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building.

The roof pitch is worth a moment too. The gable is far steeper than the hipped roof, Yosemune-zukuri, of the Japanese wing, and the Western tiles run down it in bands. This triangle is the one part that clears the boundary wall.

The interior is closed, but its contents are on record. The owner's history describes stained glass with bird and plant motifs set into the walls and doors of the Western rooms on both floors, along with a drawing room, a telephone room, and fire shutters mounted outside the windows. A room given over to the telephone alone says a good deal about where this household stood in the 1920s.

Visiting

The Nagase Takao Family Residence Western-Style Building is a private house and the interior is closed. The introductory site run by the owner lists no visiting hours and no booking procedure (checked 13 September 2026). You cannot enter the building.

For the exterior, work from the public road on the east side. A brick wall 2.7 metres high runs along that boundary, so only the roof and the upper part of the chimney show above it. Cross to the far side of the road rather than standing against the wall, and the steep triangle of the gable and the plane of Western tile come into view.

No notice prohibiting photography was found, but this is someone's home. Keep the lens off the inside of the gate and away from the windows.

Directions to the estate and the conditions for seeing it are set out on the Nagase Takao Family Residence page.