Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence

A painter's home and studio, built to his own plans

The Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence (旧川端龍子邸, Kyū Kawabata Ryūshi-tei) is the house and studio of the Japanese-style painter Kawabata Ryūshi (1885-1966) in Minamimagome 4-chome, Ota City, Tokyo, and four of its buildings, ranging from a studio of 1938 to a private Buddhist hall of about 1955, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 6, 2024. The grounds are now Ota City's Ryushi Park, shown to visitors by the Ota City Ryushi Memorial Museum across the street. The painter's name is read Ryūshi, not Ryūko.

Born Kawabata Shōtarō in Wakayama Prefecture in 1885, Ryūshi studied Western-style oil painting and spent time in the United States before turning to nihonga, painting in Japanese materials and techniques. In 1929 he founded his own exhibiting society, the Seiryūsha, and spent the rest of his career producing very large works designed to hold their own on the walls of a crowded exhibition hall, an approach he called "exhibition-hall art". He received the Order of Culture in 1959.

According to the Ota City Board of Education, Ryūshi moved to this plot in 1920 and lived here until his death in 1966. He wrote in his autobiography that building was a hobby he enjoyed, and every structure at the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence was designed from his own ideas.

A studio that survived the air raids, and a house rebuilt after them

The oldest of the four buildings at the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence is the studio, whose framework went up in 1938, the tenth anniversary year of the Seiryūsha. The living quarters burned in an air raid in 1945. Ryūshi turned the bomb crater into a garden pond and named it Bakudan Sange no Ike; sange is the Buddhist word for strewing flower petals. The pond is still there.

The present main house is a rebuilding of 1951. The ridge tag inside names its designer as Ōkawa Shōhei, the carpenter who had built Ryūshi's villa at Shuzenji in Shizuoka in 1942. Ōkawa added the middle gate to the east of the house in 1954 and the Buddhist altar room wing to the west in 1955. No ridge tag has been found for the private Buddhist hall beyond the wing, but it is thought to date from the same year.

After Ryūshi's death, Ota City bought the studio site in 1993 and received the building as a gift. His family went on living in the house until 2003, when the property passed to the national government as a tax payment in kind and was then acquired by the city. The whole site became Ota City Ryushi Park.

Layout of the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence

Three of the registered buildings, the main house with its middle gate, the Buddhist altar room wing and the private Buddhist hall, join in a line from east to west to form the living quarters. The studio stands to the north. The middle gate, reaching east from the main house, is the way through to the north garden and the studio, and the house and studio together enclose that garden. The Ryushi Memorial Museum notes that Ryūshi called his garden a planting of material for sketching.

All four buildings were registered on the same day, March 6, 2024, under consecutive numbers 13-0499 to 13-0502, and all on the criterion that they serve as a model of design. The Ryushi Memorial Museum on the south side of the street was registered the same day as 13-0503. Ryūshi planned the museum himself to mark his Order of Culture and his 77th birthday, and it was completed in 1962, facing the residence across a single road.

The park's own description gives the post-war house a construction span of 1948 to 1954, which is wider than the dates in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database (main house 1951, middle gate 1954). Dates and construction for each building are covered on its own page.

Visiting the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence

Ryushi Park, where the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence stands, is opened on the museum's opening days for guided visits led by museum staff, three times a day at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the gate is unlocked. At other times the gate is closed and you cannot walk in on your own. The museum, and therefore the tours, close on Mondays (or the following day when Monday is a public holiday), over the New Year from December 29 to January 3, and during exhibition changeovers.

The buildings are seen from outside; their interiors are not normally open. The studio is sometimes opened inside by advance reservation on special open days or in connection with exhibitions. For Tokyo Cultural Property Week 2026, the museum is opening Ryushi Park free of charge on October 24, 25 and 31 and November 1 and 3, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, with visits inside the studio on those days by advance reservation only.

The museum's visitor information does not say whether the regular park tour carries a charge. Admission to the museum itself is 200 yen for adults and 100 yen for junior high school students and younger for regular exhibitions. Nor does it say whether photography is allowed, so ask the guide on the day.

The address of the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence is 4-49-11 Minamimagome, Ota City, directly opposite the museum at 4-2-1 Chuo. From the west exit of JR Omori Station, take Tokyu Bus route 4 bound for Ebaramachi-eki Iriguchi and get off at Usudazakashita, about 2 minutes' walk away. From the south exit of Nishi-magome Station on the Toei Asakusa Line, it is a walk of about 15 minutes along the cherry-lined Magome Sakura Namiki street. The museum's car park has 5 spaces, and the narrow lanes cannot take large coaches.

Names for the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence

As a public facility the Former Kawabata Ryushi Residence goes by the name Ryushi Park (大田区立龍子公園, Ōta Kuritsu Ryūshi Kōen), and the museum also calls it simply the former house and atelier. The four registrations are listed as the Main House and Middle Gate, the Buddhist Altar Room Wing, the Private Buddhist Hall and the Studio, each prefixed with the residence name. Older English listings sometimes give the painter as Ryuko Kawabata, a misreading of 龍子.