Morita Family Residence

An old farming household on the Ogawa crossroads

The Morita Family Residence (森田家住宅, Morita-ke Jūtaku) is the homestead of an old landholding family in Ogawa, Akiruno City, Tokyo, whose nine structures, built between 1830 and 1868 and in the early Showa years, were each listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 24 December 2013.

The household trades under the name Hisamori (久森). According to the family's own account, the Moritas were the leading farming family of the district and once served as village headmen, or Shōya; the present head of the house is the 17th generation. From the Genroku era until the end of the Edo period they also brewed sake from local rice and water, and a brewery once stood on the property.

The grounds fill the northwest corner of the Ogawa crossroads on Mutsumibashi-dori, with Kumano Shrine to the east and Rinsenji temple to the north. Ogawa sits close to the point where the Aki River runs into the Tama River, and the district has long been known for plentiful, clean water. That is the practical reason a farming family here could also make sake.

The property covers roughly 6,000 square metres. Akiruno City's published list of cultural properties shows that these nine are the only Registered Tangible Cultural Properties anywhere in the city.

Nine listings, one household

All nine parts of the Morita Family Residence were registered on the same day under consecutive numbers, 13-0313 through 13-0321, and all under the same criterion: that they contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Seven count as buildings; the gate and the board fence are classed as structures.

• Main House (13-0313): late Edo, altered around 1973; a large single-storey farmhouse
• Shop Storehouse, or misegura (13-0314): 1852; a two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse with a shop front on the road
• Front Storehouse (13-0315): around 1852; moved to its present spot in 1983
• Miso Storehouse (13-0316): late Edo; a small single-storey storehouse still used for food
• West Storehouse (13-0317): late Edo; used for household goods
• Former Rice Storehouse (13-0318): late Edo, altered in 1996; the largest storehouse on the site
• Okankindo (13-0319): late Edo; the family's private Buddhist chapel
• Gate (13-0320): late Edo; a Yakuimon framed in zelkova
• Wooden Fence (13-0321): early Showa, sometime between 1926 and 1945; a black board fence running west from the gate

Only the shop storehouse carries a firm date, 1852. The main house and most of the storehouses are assigned to the last decades of the Edo period on stylistic grounds. If they went up at about the same time as the shop storehouse, as the family's account suggests for the main house, the core of the homestead took shape around the years Commodore Perry's ships reached Japan.

Taken together, the nine read as an inventory of what a wealthy rural household needed: a house to live in, a gate to receive guests, a shop facing the road, separate stores for rice, miso and family possessions, and a small chapel for the household's Buddhist rites. The value lies less in any single building than in the fact that the whole set survives.

How the homestead is laid out

The main house of the Morita Family Residence stands in the middle of the lot, facing Mutsumibashi-dori. Its gate stands directly in front of it and joins the west wall of the shop storehouse. From the west end of the gate the board fence runs along the southern edge of the property, turning as it goes. The front storehouse occupies the southeast corner, with the miso storehouse tucked behind it.

West of the main house is the west storehouse, and behind that the chapel. Further west, near the edge of the grounds, is the former rice storehouse, the only one of the nine registered under the neighbouring lot number, 633-4 Konaka.

From the street, start at the front storehouse by the crossroads and walk west past the shop storehouse, the gate and the fence. Those four make up the public face of the homestead and are easy to see from the road. The main house, the west storehouse, the chapel and the miso storehouse sit inside the grounds and remain part of a working household.

Visiting and getting there

The Morita Family Residence is still the family's home and is not open as a whole. When the listing came through, the family invited people in the area to drop by and look around; Akiruno City's cultural property list, for its part, asks visitors to get the owner's permission. The surest way to see more than the street front is to use one of the two businesses that occupy the old storehouses.

The shop storehouse now houses Kanmi Sabō Misegura Hisamori, a sweets café open noon until 5 p.m. and closed on Tuesdays (or the following day when Tuesday is a public holiday). It takes no reservations and may stop seating early when busy. The former rice storehouse is Tōtōan (燈々庵), a kaiseki restaurant with a ceramics gallery, taking lunch guests between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and dinner guests between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., closing at 9 p.m. Dinner must be booked by the previous business day, and closing days are posted on the restaurant's calendar.

The nearest station is Higashi-Akiru on the JR Itsukaichi Line, about 10 minutes' walk away. By car it is about 10 minutes from the Akiruno interchange of the Ken-O Expressway and about 15 minutes from the Hachioji interchange of the Chuo Expressway. Parking is limited, and the café asks guests to come by public transport and not to wait for a space by stopping on the road.

There is no posted rule on photography. The street front can be photographed freely; inside the businesses or the grounds, ask the staff first. The main house and the other living quarters are not generally open inside.