Yamashita Family Residence

About the Yamashita Family Residence

The Yamashita Family Residence (山下家住宅, Yamashita-ke Jūtaku) is a farmhouse estate at 598 Hatada, Matsukawa-cho, Gotsu City, Shimane Prefecture, whose eight structures, built between the late Edo period and the early Showa era, were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 15, 2010. The eight are the main house, an annex, a back storehouse (setogura), a gate storehouse (mongura), a row house (nagaya), a well shed, a gate with a tsuiji wall, and a stone retaining wall. They carry the consecutive registration numbers 32-0109 to 32-0116, and all were registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The estate sits in the hills well away from central Gotsu, on ground cut into a slope. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the main house as a good surviving example of a large farmhouse in a mountain setting. Only the main house and the annex were living quarters. The rest are the working parts of a farming household: storehouses, a building for servants and a horse, a well, a gate and wall, and the stone terrace that holds the whole site up.

Every roof on the Yamashita Family Residence is laid with Sekishū-gawara, the red-brown glazed tiles made in the Iwami region of western Shimane. Set against white Shikkui plaster, the red roofs tie buildings of quite different dates into one recognizable estate.

How the Yamashita Family Residence Took Shape

Put the eight dates in order and the Yamashita Family Residence turns out to have been assembled over roughly a century. The dates below follow the Agency for Cultural Affairs database.

• Stone wall: late Edo period (1751 to 1829)
• Gate storehouse: 1841
• Row house: end of the Edo period (1830 to 1867)
• Main house: 1883
• Back storehouse: 1898
• Annex: 1929
• Well shed, gate and tsuiji wall: early Showa era

The oldest firmly dated building is the gate storehouse, which means the present main house is younger than both the gate storehouse and the row house. Whether the main house replaced an earlier one in 1883, or came about some other way, is not stated in the published records. The stone wall along the front, though, goes back to the late Edo period, so the house site itself was clearly in use long before the Meiji era.

In the Showa era a second layer was added. The annex, with its formal reception rooms, went up against the east side of the main house in 1929; the garden south of it was closed off with a plastered wall and gate, and a roofed well was built nearby. Walking the plan, you can read a working farm gradually taking on rooms for guests and study.

The Layout of the Estate

The Yamashita Family Residence stands on a platform built out from the hillside, and its front edge facing the road is held by the stone wall. Stone steps climb from the road to the front of the main house, and the wall runs along both sides of the steps and beside the road for a combined 45 meters.

The main house occupies the northern part of the site and faces south, with the annex joined to its east end. The back storehouse sits directly north of the main house, at the rear of the property, while the gate storehouse takes the southeast corner of the site. The row house stands southwest of the main house with its ridge running north to south. East of the main house and south of the annex lies a garden enclosed by the tsuiji wall, entered through a gate that faces west. The well shed is southeast of the annex.

Seen from the road, the stone wall and steps form the public face of the estate, with the long roof of the main house rising behind, the gate storehouse on the southeast corner and the row house to the southwest. Each building is covered in detail on its own page.

Visiting the Yamashita Family Residence

The Yamashita Family Residence is a private home. As of September 2026 we could find no official announcement of interior openings or guided visits. Visitors should stay off the property and look at the stone wall and the buildings from the road.

There is no published guidance on photography either. Because people live here, avoid pointing a camera past the gate or up the steps, and keep residents, cars and laundry out of the frame.

The estate lies in a hill settlement about 8 kilometers east of JR Gōtsu Station on the San'in Main Line, measured in a straight line. We found no official information on bus services to Hatada, so check your route before setting out.