Harada Family Residence (Ashikaga)

The Harada Family Residence in Ashikaga

The Harada Family Residence (原田家住宅, Harada-ke Jūtaku) is a yarn merchant's shop and home on the old National Route 50 in Tori 6-chome, Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, whose store of around 1920 and main house of around 1942 were each registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on November 10, 2005 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Registered houses in Shizuoka, Nagano and other prefectures share the name, so this page calls it the Harada Family Residence (Ashikaga).

According to Ashikaga City, the Harada family went into business around 1897 as dealers in raw silk and twisted yarn, the materials the town's weavers worked with. Ashikaga was a textile town, and the family kept its shop on the road that ran through it.

Neither building stands where it was built. In 1978, when the old Route 50 was widened, both were moved about 4 metres by hikiya, the practice of jacking a building up and sliding it intact to a new footing (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Ashikaga City). Because nothing was dismantled, the Taisho shopfront and the pre-war house behind it survive still joined to each other.

How the Site Is Laid Out

At the Harada Family Residence the store stands on the street and the main house follows behind it. The store is a two-storey timber building facing north onto the old Route 50; the main house is a single-storey timber dwelling built against the store's south wall (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Trade at the front, family life at the back: the usual order of a Japanese merchant house.

About twenty years separate the two. The store dates from around 1920 and the main house from around 1942, so the newer dwelling went up behind the older shop (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Their building areas are 45 square metres and 121 square metres, which means the house at the rear is much the larger of the pair.

Next door is the Yanagida Family Residence, a raw-silk merchant's premises registered on the same day (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Ashikaga City). Each Harada building has its own page with the structural detail.

Why the Buildings Were Registered

Both buildings of the Harada Family Residence were registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The store carries registration number 09-0122 and the main house 09-0123.

Ashikaga City values the Harada Family Residence, together with the Yanagida premises beside it, as a surviving piece of the street of merchant houses that lined the road when the town prospered on weaving. The Agency likewise notes that the store conveys how the street once looked.

Visiting and Access

The Harada Family Residence is privately owned (Ashikaga City), and no official source describes interior visits or opening arrangements. In practice, seeing it means looking at the front of the store from the pavement. The main house lies behind the store.

Nothing is published about photography either. Stay off the property and keep to views from the street.

The old Route 50 on which the Harada Family Residence stands runs east to west through central Ashikaga; Tochigi Prefecture's documents label prefectural road Kiryu-Iwafune as the "former Route 50". In a straight line the house is about 1.1 km northwest of Ashikagashi Station on the Tobu Isesaki Line and about 1.5 km west of Ashikaga Station on the JR Ryomo Line (calculated from Geospatial Information Authority coordinates). Ashikagashi Station is on the south bank of the Watarase River, so the walk is longer than the straight line once a bridge crossing is added. No dedicated parking is advertised.