Aoki Family Residence Main House

What Is the Aoki Family Residence Main House?

The Aoki Family Residence Main House (青木家住宅主屋, Aokike Jūtaku Shuoku) is a two-storey timber house built in 1915 in Mima-cho, Mima City, Tokushima Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 1998. It is the central building of the Aoki estate.

It has a tiled roof and a building area of 149 square metres, and stands near the middle of a large walled plot, with the barn to its west, storehouses and a warehouse to the north-west and a four-legged gate to the north. Mima City describes the Aoki Family Residence Main House as a house built for its owner's retirement.

Why the Aoki Family Residence Main House Was Registered

The Aoki Family Residence Main House was registered on 9 October 1998 as number 36-0010. Of the eight structures of the estate registered that day, it alone was listed as a building that sets a standard of design; the other seven qualified for their contribution to the historic landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a fine example of how rural housing changed in the modern era. It was the home of a family that had farmed indigo and then prospered in construction, and while the Agency does not spell out the change in detail, the Aoki Family Residence Main House lays pent roofs and designed upper windows over the basic form of a farmhouse under a great hipped-and-gabled roof.

The Agency names three features: the imposing exterior of an Irimoya-zukuri hipped-and-gabled main roof with Hisashi pent roofs on all four sides, walls finished in grey nezumi plaster, and the design of the upper-floor windows. Each gives the house the presence expected of the heart of an estate.

What to Look For at the Aoki Family Residence Main House

A Great Roof with Pent Roofs All Round

The roof composition defines the Aoki Family Residence Main House. Beneath the hipped-and-gabled main roof, pent roofs run round all four sides, so the eaves step down in two tiers and the building gains depth in outline. Mima City gives the house a frontage of eleven ken, about 20 metres, and a depth of six ken, about 11 metres, and the long main roof spans that full width.

Grey Nezumi Plaster

The walls are nezumi-shikkui, lime Shikkui darkened with soot or ash to a soft grey, quieter than ordinary white plaster. The barn just to the west repeats the finish, pulling the centre of the estate into one colour scheme.

Upper Windows and an Eight-Room Plan

The Agency lists the design of the upper-floor windows among the house's features, and how the upper windows sit beneath the great roof is one of the things to study when looking at the Aoki Family Residence Main House from outside.

Inside, according to Mima City, are eight rooms: a formal Zashiki reception room, a middle room, an office for keeping the accounts, an earth-floored entrance, a bedroom, a kitchen and a cooking shed among them. Retirement house or not, the Aoki Family Residence Main House was built to hold a family's daily life and business.

Visiting the Aoki Family Residence Main House

The Aoki Family Residence Main House is the centrepiece of the municipal facility known as the Aoki Family Residence and has been used for community meetings, flower-arranging classes, evenings of dance and shamisen music, and wedding receptions. No regular opening days are published (checked 1 October 2026). To see the reception rooms and other interiors, contact the Regional Learning Promotion Division of the Mima City Board of Education in advance.

If an event or booking gets you inside, look at the Aoki Family Residence Main House from the garden side to see how the main roof and pent roofs overlap and how the upper windows line up. The four-legged gate to the north is said to have been the garden route to the reception rooms of the Aoki Family Residence Main House, and following that line helps make sense of which way the house faces.