Aze Family Residence

The Aze Family Residence

The Aze Family Residence (阿瀬家住宅, Azeke Jūtaku, also written Azeke Jutaku) is a merchant's house of the late Edo period on Nakamachi-dori in Yuasa, Yuasa Town, Arida District, Wakayama Prefecture; its main house, tool storehouse and rice storehouse were each registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on August 7, 2023 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Aze family once made fishing nets. Yuasa is known as a town of soy sauce brewers and other trades, but the Wakayama Prefectural Board of Education notes that nets were also one of its specialities. The house stands in the middle of the old town and is privately owned (Wakayama Prefecture; Yuasa Town).

Yuasa as a Town of Net Makers

Soy sauce tends to overshadow it, but Yuasa was a net-making town as well. According to the plan for the preservation and use of cultural properties that Yuasa Town drew up in 2021, many fishermen of early modern Yuasa sailed as far as the Goto Islands and the Boso coast after sardines, and the nets they depended on, which had a reputation for great strength, became one of the town's main industries.

The same plan lists the Aze house among the 20 buildings chosen for detailed individual survey in the study of the historic townscape carried out in fiscal 1999 and 2000, and dates it to the later early modern period. When the Aze Family Residence was put forward for registration, the report of the Council for Cultural Affairs described the group as showing both the net-making trade, a Yuasa speciality alongside soy sauce, and the historic streetscape.

How the 3 Buildings Are Arranged

The main house of the Aze Family Residence faces west onto Nakamachi-dori. Behind it to the east, at the back of the plot, 2 earthen storehouses stand in a row from north to south: the tool storehouse to the north and the rice storehouse to the south, covered by one continuous roof (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Wakayama Prefecture). The tool storehouse marks the north-east corner of the plot.

The main house is a gabled building with a roof of lapped tiles and a low upper floor of the Tsushi-nikai type, with a building area of 188 square metres. The storehouses are 2-storey buildings in Dozo-zukuri earthen-walled construction, each with a building area of 25 square metres. All 3 are dated to the end of the Edo period; connected reception rooms were added to the main house in the late Meiji period, and it was altered around 1965 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The construction of each building and what to look for are covered on its own page.

Visiting and Access

The Aze Family Residence is privately owned, and no information on interior visits was found in the materials of the Agency, Wakayama Prefecture or Yuasa Town (checked November 2026). Assume that only the exterior can be seen from the street. Please stay off the plot and remember that it is a home.

The nearest station is Yuasa on the JR Kisei Main Line. Measured from the coordinates in the Agency database, the main house of the Aze Family Residence lies about 500 metres north-west of the station in a straight line. No official guidance on the walking route or time was found.