Arai Family Residence Main House

About the Arai Family Residence Main House (Shinjuku)

The Arai Family Residence Main House (新井家住宅主屋, Arai-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is an early Showa-period house, built between 1926 and 1945, in Kitayamabushicho, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, and it was entered on Japan's register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 29, 2013.

It is a single dwelling made up of a Japanese-style wing (wakan) and a Western-style wing (yōkan), with a building area of 346 m². A building with exactly the same registered name stands in Irumacho, Chofu City, but that one is a late Edo farmhouse, a separate cultural property in a different place and period.

Why the Shinjuku Main House Was Registered

It was registered in the 74th round under number 13-0292, for its contribution to the historic landscape.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out the quality of finish in both wings. In the Japanese wing, the tokonoma alcove and the shoin are made with prized woods, rosewood (shitan), ebony (kokutan) and tagayasan, an ironwood, which make the formal rooms rich. All three are hard, dark tropical timbers imported to Japan and often used for alcove posts, sills and shelves. The Western wing has a roof of high-grade French tiles and outer walls finished in rustication and Scratch tile, giving it a solid, dignified face.

What gives the Arai Family Residence Main House its value is that both halves of an early Showa house built in two styles survive together in central Tokyo.

The Two Wings of the Arai Main House

Rustication means masonry whose faces are left rough or whose joints are cut deep, so the wall catches shadow. Scratch tile is tile with a combed, grooved surface, very common on buildings of the early Showa years. "French tile" is the usual Japanese name for interlocking Western-style clay roof tiles. The Western wing of the Arai Family Residence Main House is worth looking at for the way those three materials work together.

The Japanese wing is about its alcove and shoin in fine woods. Those are interior fittings and cannot be seen from outside.

The records disagree on the number of storeys. The structure field in the Agency's database says "timber, single storey with a partial second floor, tiled roof", while the description on the same page calls it a two-storey timber house. Which part has the upper floor could not be confirmed from published sources.

Visiting the Arai Family Residence Main House

The owner field for the Arai Family Residence Main House is blank in the Agency's database, and Shinjuku Ward publishes no visiting or photography information for it (checked October 2026). How the house is used today is not published either, so if you go, look only from the street and do not enter the grounds. The ward's Culture and Tourism Division handles cultural properties in Shinjuku.

Kitayamabushicho lies between Ushigome-yanagicho and Ushigome-kagurazaka stations on the Toei Oedo Line. On the map it is roughly 500 m in a straight line from either station, about 7 to 8 minutes on foot.