Former Ichien Family Residence

About the Former Ichien Family Residence

The Former Ichien Family Residence (旧一圓家住宅, Kyū Ichien-ke Jūtaku) is an Edo-period family estate in Ichien, Taga Town, Inukami District, Shiga Prefecture, whose main house of 1857 and three storehouses were entered together as four Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 7, 2014. All four were registered under the same criterion: buildings that contribute to the historic landscape of the country.

The present operators describe the Ichien as the family that served as Shōya, the hereditary village headman, in this hamlet during the Edo period. The family name is written 一圓 and the district name 一円, two different characters with the same reading, ichien.

The owner today is the Hikone Landscape Forum, a non-profit organization, and the Former Ichien Family Residence operates as a reservation-only guesthouse under the name Taga Satonoyado Ichien Yashiki.

A Headman's House and What Came After

According to the national database kept by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the main house went up in 1857 and was remodeled in 1891. The rice storehouse behind it and the utility and lumber storehouse against its south wall both date from the late Edo period, while the document storehouse joined to its northeast corner is placed in the early Meiji years, between 1868 and 1882. Read in sequence, the house and two storehouses were in place before the fall of the shogunate, and the document storehouse followed within a generation.

In 2008 the Ichien family handed the property to the Hikone Landscape Forum. For the next ten years, until 2018, a residents' group called the Taga Club used it as a community hub known as Taga Sato no Eki, a kind of village station for local events. The house no longer had a family living in it, but people kept coming through its doors.

Registration came in the middle of that decade, in 2014. The estate was later refitted for overnight guests, and it is now run by the Hikone Landscape Forum together with LLC Satoyama Taga as a combined conservation and community project.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The operators give the plot as about 1,678 square meters, with roughly 560 square meters of floor space across the buildings. The main house stands at the center of the Former Ichien Family Residence, facing west, and every storehouse is tucked behind or beside it.

Two of the storehouses are physically joined to the main house: the document storehouse at a projecting wing on the northeast, and the utility and lumber storehouse along the south side. Only the rice storehouse stands on its own, set behind the house with its ridge running east to west. The house holding its storehouses close, rather than scattering them across the yard, is what gives the estate its outline.

• Main House: 1857, remodeled 1891; wooden, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 212 square meters; registration no. 25-0349
• Document Storehouse: early Meiji; dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 24 square meters; registration no. 25-0350
• Rice Storehouse: late Edo; dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 28 square meters; registration no. 25-0351
• Utility and Lumber Storehouse: late Edo; dozo-zukuri, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 28 square meters; registration no. 25-0352

The operators mention a guest room whose upstairs windows look onto a Japanese garden. The garden itself is not part of the registration.

Visiting and Getting There

Because the Former Ichien Family Residence runs as a guesthouse, the interiors are in practice open only to people who have booked a stay. The official website lists no general tours or open days outside of lodging (checked September 27, 2026). It describes two guest rooms, one on the upper floor of the house and one fitted inside a storehouse. The same site gives the limit as one party a day in one place and two in another, so confirm when you book.

The website says nothing either way about photography. Guests should check with the staff, and if another party is staying, keep them out of the frame. Anyone not staying should keep to what can be seen from outside the property.

By public transport, the website suggests a taxi of about 10 minutes from JR Hikone Station on the Biwako Line, or a walk of about 20 minutes from Taga-taisha-mae Station on the Ohmi Railway Taga Line. By car it is about 10 minutes from the Hikone Interchange on the Meishin Expressway, and there is parking for 10 cars for guests.