What the Akada Family Residence Is
The Akada Family Residence (赤田家住宅, Akada-ke Jūtaku) is an old farming household's compound in Otamachi, Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture, where five buildings of very different ages, the oldest a late Edo-period gate and the youngest a storage shed of about 1967, were entered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 6 August 2025. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as an old family house in the farming villages that spread across the northeast shore of Lake Biwa.
Put the five in order and the story of the place falls out. The main gate is late Edo. The main house went up in 1910, in the last years of the Meiji era. The detached room followed in 1916 and the storehouse in 1917, both within seven years of the house. The storage shed came roughly half a century later.
No single moment of construction defines the Akada Family Residence. It is a household that kept adding and rebuilding across generations, and the registration treats that accumulation as the thing worth keeping.
How the Compound Is Laid Out
The Agency's notes on each building make the plan easy to reconstruct. The main house sits in the northwest of the plot and faces south. Directly in front of it stands the thatched main gate, also facing south. Southwest of the house, in line with the gate, a small storage shed runs east to west; the Agency singles it out as the building that, together with the gate, forms the formal street front of the property. From the road, those two are the face of the Akada household.
The detached room stands southeast of the main house, facing west, and the storehouse is tucked away to the northwest. Gate and shed at the front, the house behind, a guest wing and a strongroom to either side: a clear division between public front and private interior that is typical of well-established rural families.
One more element ties the plan together. The Agency's notes praise the main house for its view of the garden, and its published photograph of the house is taken from what it calls the main garden. Read each building with the garden in mind and its position starts to make sense.
Five Listings, Two Criteria
All five buildings were listed under the same notice of 6 August 2025, with consecutive register numbers 25-0525 through 25-0529: the main house is 25-0525, the detached room 25-0526, the storehouse 25-0527, the storage shed 25-0528 and the main gate 25-0529.
They were listed on two different grounds. The main house and the detached room qualified as buildings that serve as a model of design. The gate, the storehouse and the shed qualified for contributing to the historic landscape. The first criterion rewards the quality of a building in its own right; the second rewards its part in the scenery of an estate or a village. In other words, the two core rooms of family life were judged on their craftsmanship and materials, and the three buildings around them on the way they shape the compound.
The inclusion of a shed from about 1967 is worth pausing on. Buildings are normally eligible for registration once they are 50 years old, and the shed had passed that mark by 2025. That an Edo-period gate and a postwar shed were listed on the same day says the Agency was valuing the ensemble rather than age alone.
The Akada Garden Next Door
The garden of the Akada Family Residence is a cultural property in its own right. Under the name Akada-shi Teien (赤田氏庭園), it was designated a prefectural Place of Scenic Beauty by Shiga Prefecture on 24 March 2015, and Nagahama City's register records extensions of the protected area in October 2018 and February 2021. The buildings are nationally registered; the garden is protected by the prefecture. Two separate systems overlap on one property.
According to the prefecture, no firm record survives of when the garden was made or by whom. The Akada family does, however, keep an Edo-period picture scroll said to show garden stones being hauled into place. Combined with the family's standing and wealth at the time, and with resemblances to the Kokei garden at Nishi Honganji in Kyoto and to the garden of Fukudenji, that points to the early Edo period.
The design centres on a pond. A high artificial hill and a dry waterfall of set stones rise on the left, crane and turtle islands sit in the water, and the scenery beyond is borrowed into the view. The prefecture highlights how the garden draws on a generous water supply, feeding the pond through two channels to create a current, and drops a waterfall on the right. When the main house of 1910 opened its best room toward this garden, the garden was already centuries old.
Visiting and Getting There
The Akada Family Residence is still a private home, and neither the buildings nor the garden are regularly open. Neither the Agency for Cultural Affairs nor Nagahama City publishes opening days or a booking route (checked 27 September 2026), and the interiors cannot be entered. Anyone hoping to see the garden should contact Nagahama City's cultural properties office well before travelling.
What can be seen from outside is mostly the street front: the thatched gate and the shed beside it. The main house, the detached room and the storehouse stand behind the gate, so a full view from the road is not possible. Photograph from the public road only, do not step through the gate, and avoid angles that take in the family's daily life.
By public transport, take the Kokoku Bus Takayama Line from JR Nagahama Station and get off at the Ota stop. Check times with Ohmi Railway and Kokoku Bus before setting out. Drivers can aim for 133 Otamachi, Nagahama, but no visitor parking is provided.
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Akada Family Residence Main House (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015469
- National Cultural Properties Database, Akada Family Residence Detached Room (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015470
- National Cultural Properties Database, Akada Family Residence Storehouse (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015471
- National Cultural Properties Database, Akada Family Residence Storage Shed (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015472
- National Cultural Properties Database, Akada Family Residence Main Gate (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00015473
- Cultural Heritage Online, Akada-shi Teien (Akada Garden)
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/235641
- Nagahama City, List of Designated and Registered Cultural Properties (as of 6 August 2025)
- https://www.city.nagahama.lg.jp/cmsfiles/contents/0000014/14176/ichirann.pdf
- Ohmi Railway and Kokoku Bus, Nagahama Area Route Map
- https://www.ohmitetudo.co.jp/bus-rosenzu-nagahama.pdf
Last verified: 2026.09.26
Basic Information
| Name | Akada Family Residence |
|---|---|
| Location | 133 Otamachi, Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture |
| Owner | Private |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (5) |
| Coordinates | 35.46789, 136.31510 |
