Aoki Family Residence (Mima)

What Is the Aoki Family Residence?

The Aoki Family Residence (青木家住宅, Aokike Jūtaku) is a walled country estate built in 1915 in Mima-cho, Mima City, Tokushima Prefecture, whose eight structures, the main house, two storehouses, a warehouse, a barn, a gate, an earthen wall and a brick wall, were entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998. Mima City's tourism pages also call it the Aoki-tei, the Aoki mansion.

The plot measures 3,590 square metres. Earthen and brick walls close it on every side, about 2 metres high according to the city, and the whole property now belongs to Mima City, which runs it as a municipal facility.

From Indigo Farming to Construction: How the Aoki Family Residence Came About

The Agency for Cultural Affairs database describes the Aoki as a farming household that once produced indigo, the dye crop that made the Yoshino River valley wealthy in the Edo period, and that turned to the construction business in the modern era and did well from it. The two storehouses in the north-west corner of the Aoki Family Residence are both recorded as buildings used in indigo production.

The city tells the story from the builder's side. Aoki Isaburō, it says, came back from Nagasaki to his wife's home town and built the house in 1915 as a place to retire. It was a generous size for a retirement house, and local memory has his wife, Kokiku, spending her old age weeding the large garden from morning to evening with a bamboo spatula.

The house then stood empty for more than thirty years. In 1992 an Aoki couple living in Osaka gave it to the former town of Mima, and on 9 October 1998 all eight structures were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties.

When Mima-cho merged into the new Mima City in 2005, the city passed an ordinance the same year establishing the Aoki Family Residence as a public facility. Its stated aims are to protect a nationally registered cultural property, to support local cultural life, and to bring people from inside and outside the city together; the Mima City Board of Education manages it.

The Eight Registered Structures of the Aoki Family Residence

The eight entries share a registration date of 9 October 1998 and run consecutively from number 36-0010 to 36-0017 in the fourteenth round of listings. The main house qualified as a building that sets a standard of design; the other seven were listed for their contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency's records give the following construction and size.

• Main house (36-0010): timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 149 m²
• Storehouse No. 1 (36-0011): clay-walled dozo construction, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 30 m²
• Storehouse No. 2 (36-0012): clay-walled dozo construction, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 50 m²
• Warehouse (36-0013): timber, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 104 m²
• Barn (36-0014): timber, single storey, tiled roof, building area 40 m²
• Gate (36-0015): timber Shikyakumon (four-legged gate), tiled roof
• Earthen wall (36-0016): 44 m long
• Brick wall (36-0017): brick, 42 m long

All eight are dated to 1915. What the listing protects is a complete household layout of one period: not just the family's house but its storage, its working buildings, its gate and its boundary.

How the Aoki Family Residence Is Laid Out

The main house stands near the middle of the plot. Mima City describes it as a two-storey Irimoya-zukuri building with a frontage of eleven ken, about 20 metres, and a depth of six ken, about 11 metres, divided into eight rooms: a formal reception room, a middle room, an office, an earth-floored entrance, a bedroom, a kitchen and a cooking shed among them.

West of the main house is the barn, and beyond it the long warehouse runs north to south along the western edge. The L-shaped Storehouse No. 2 fills the north-west corner, with Storehouse No. 1 attached to its east, so that the north side of the estate shows the road a front of storehouse walls. North of the main house, also on the road, is the four-legged gate, which the Agency describes as originally the back way in, leading through the garden to the reception rooms.

The boundary is built in two materials. An earthen wall on a stone base closes the north and east sides; a brick wall closes the south, its eastern stretch climbing alongside the ramp that leads up into the property. The pages for each building and wall of the Aoki Family Residence go into their construction in detail.

Visiting the Aoki Family Residence

The Aoki Family Residence is not a museum. It is a municipal building used as a venue, and the city lists community planning meetings, flower-arranging classes, evenings of dance and shamisen music, and wedding receptions among its uses. No regular opening days or hours are published on the city's websites (checked 1 October 2026).

Under the ordinance, use is in principle free of charge. Since 1 April 2024 commercial use has also been allowed, in which case the user pays a monthly fee set by regulation at no more than 10 percent of that month's sales, plus electricity, water and similar costs. Anyone hoping to see the interior, or to book the house for an event, should contact the Regional Learning Promotion Division of the Mima City Board of Education (tel. 0883-52-8011) in advance.

A good deal can be seen from outside. Walking the road on the north side, you pass the earthen wall, the four-legged gate and the storehouse walls in turn, which gives a clear sense of the estate's size. There is no published policy on photography, so if you are admitted to the grounds, ask on the spot.

A car is the practical way to get there. Travel listings put the house about 10 minutes by car from the Mima interchange on the Tokushima Expressway and about 5 minutes by car from Awa-Handa Station on the JR Tokushima Line. The station is on the opposite bank of the Yoshino River, so plan on a taxi from there.