Shojukan

What Shojukan Is

Shojukan is the main residence of the Matsui Kyūemon family, Ōmi merchants of Tatsutachō in Gokashō, Higashiōmi City, Shiga Prefecture, and its thirteen buildings, raised between 1800 and the early Shōwa era, were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 4 February 2021. The garden followed on 11 October of the same year as a Registered Monument.

The grounds cover roughly 2,000 square metres. A front gate opens onto the road along the northern edge, and behind it stands the Kayabuki main house of 1814. From that house the compound spreads outward: the Shindachi wing to the east, the hallway parlour and south storehouse to the south, the mizuya and three more storehouses to the west, with a fence running 136 metres around the perimeter. The thirteen buildings gathered under the name Shojukan divide one estate between them.

How an Ōmi Merchant Built at Home

The Agency for Cultural Affairs register calls the Shojukan main house a typical example of the farmhouse-type main residence of an Ōmi merchant. A Doma earth floor runs through the western side, the four rooms are set in the staggered kuichigai arrangement, and the roof frame uses rafter-pair construction stiffened by two tiers of tie-beams running along the ridge line. The register singles out that tie-beam detail as unusual.

The distinction matters for visitors who expect a shop front. Ōmi merchants of Gokashō traded far from home, in Edo, Kyoto and the northern provinces, and kept their family seat in the village looking like a farm. Shojukan preserves that arrangement intact.

The thirteen buildings did not go up together. The main house and four storehouses are late Edo; the Shindachi dates to 1873, the mizuya to the early Meiji years, the hallway parlour, the kawato and the front gate to the Taishō era, and the Shinryo and nagaya to early Shōwa. What stands today accumulated over some 130 years.

In 1924 the Kuninomiya princely house visited. The register records that the Shindachi was raised to two storeys in preparation for that occasion, which accounts for its raised upper chamber and its reception room in mixed Japanese and Western taste. The Higashiōmi City Tourism Association notes that a flush toilet said to be the oldest made in Japan survives here.

Walking the Grounds

The front gate stands about 9.5 metres back from the road. Pass through it and the main house faces you, with the Shindachi to your right on the east. The earth floor of the main house runs west into the mizuya, where a granite-flagged floor holds two cooking stoves and a well. The place where the household cooked doubles as the route out to the storehouses.

Five storehouses remain. The document storehouse sits southeast of the main house, the south storehouse due south, the north and new storehouses to the west, the rice storehouse to the northwest. All are two-storey Dozo-zukuri with Sangawara-buki roofs and Shikkui plaster walls. Only the rice storehouse has vertical boarding on its ground floor, and set beside the others the difference in surface is easy to read.

Round to the south and the hallway parlour opens onto the inner garden before continuing to the south storehouse. In the southwest corner a nagaya storeroom bends in an L, built by planting posts inside the perimeter fence and roofing over the gap. Along the northern road survives the kawato, a stone washing place stepping down to the stream. Shojukan meets the public road at three points only: this gate, this fence and this kawato.

The Shojukan Garden

The garden at Shojukan is attributed to Katsumoto Sōeki, known by the art name Donketsu, who worked from the closing years of the Edo period into the early Meiji era and lived from 1810 to 1889. According to the Cultural Heritage Online entry, stepping stones curve around a gentle rise in the foreground and lead back to a low artificial hill set with a large stone lantern and accent stones.

Donketsu was born in Sakata District in Ōmi and settled in Gokashō Kondō in his last years. Gardens in his manner survive across the eastern shore of Lake Biwa, but the ones traced to his own hand are few. That is the ground on which the Shojukan garden was registered as a Registered Monument on 11 October 2021.

Sit down in the Zashiki of the main house and the garden arrives at tatami height. The line of stepping stones drops out of sight in the near ground and reappears beyond the hill, a sequence that reads differently from standing eye level.

Visiting Shojukan

Shojukan opens to the public as the Merchant Museum, Kyōrinbō Betsuin. Kyōrinbō, a temple in Ōmihachiman City, runs it as a branch and opens it only in spring and autumn. The temple website gives the autumn 2026 season as weekends and public holidays from 14 November to 6 December, with the spring 2027 opening planned for the Golden Week holidays. Admission is 500 yen for adults and 300 yen for elementary and junior high school students.

The Higashiōmi City Tourism Association lists opening hours of 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with last admission at 3:30 p.m. Photography is allowed, and the heart-shaped inome study window has become the shot most visitors come for. A life-size figure of Daikokuten is enshrined indoors.

By public transport, take a Kokoku bus bound for Yōkaichi Station from Notogawa Station on the JR Biwako Line, get off at Kondō Tatsutaguchi and walk about 10 minutes. Drivers will find parking for eight cars at the corner of the site; when it is full, the Ōmi Merchant Museum a five-minute walk away takes the overflow.

Opening periods shift from year to year. Check the Kyōrinbō website for current dates before setting out for Shojukan.