Takahashi Family Residence Main House

What Is the Takahashi Family Residence Main House?

The Takahashi Family Residence Main House (高橋家住宅主屋, Takahashi-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) in Minamiyamicho, Tokushima City, is a single-storey timber farmhouse built in 1799 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 23, 1999. It is the oldest of the six registered structures on the Takahashi property and stands in the middle of the plot.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a timber building with a tiled roof and a building area of 138 square meters. The date is not a guess: a ridge tablet gives the year of construction. The Takahashi family is said to have bought the land and house only after the Meiji Restoration, so the building had already stood here for generations under earlier owners.

Why the Main House Was Registered

Of the six structures registered on the same day, only the Takahashi Family Residence Main House qualified as a model of design.

The Agency's case rests on the roof. A thatched core is wrapped on all four sides by tiled eaves, a form known in Tokushima as shihōbuta, literally a "four-sided lid." The official commentary calls it characteristic of this region.

On a Shihōbuta-zukuri house the tall thatch over the living core is ringed by a lower skirt of tiles, so the roof reads in two tiers. The database's structure field says only "tiled roof," while its commentary describes the thatched core. Whether the thatch is still exposed today or has been covered over could not be confirmed for this article.

What to Notice at the Takahashi Main House

Look for the line where one roof gives way to the other. On a shihōbuta house the change of pitch and material runs right around the building, and on the Takahashi Family Residence Main House it is that unbroken circuit of eaves that defines the type.

The date matters too. The indigo fermenting house, west barn and storehouse belong to the early Meiji period, and the gate and wall to 1887 to 1896, which makes the main house some seventy to nearly a hundred years older than its neighbors. It is the one building on the property that shows the Edo-period farmhouse the Takahashi bought.

Visiting the Takahashi Family Residence Main House

The Takahashi Family Residence Main House is a private home and its interior is not open. As of October 2026 there was no announcement of tours or special openings.

Because the house sits in the middle of the plot behind the front gate and wall, probably little more than part of its roof can be seen from outside. Stay off the property, and if you take photos, keep the residents' daily life out of the frame.