Kiwata Family Residence

What Is the Kiwata Family Residence?

The Kiwata Family Residence (木綿家住宅, Kiwata-ke Jūtaku) is the town home of a cotton-textile family in Horidomehigashi, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture; its main house, annex, storehouse, and gate and wall, all built between 1939 and 1940, became Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 21 June 2013.

The family name is written with the characters for "cotton cloth" (木綿), which most readers would pronounce momen, but here it is read Kiwata; that is the reading the Agency for Cultural Affairs gives in its national database. The Kiwata Family Residence stands in a built-up district about 1.3 kilometers south of Wakayama Castle, presenting its gate and wall to the street on the south.

A Cotton Family and a Two-Year Building Program

According to Wakayama Prefecture, the Kiwata family made and sold cotton textiles, one of the core industries of modern Wakayama. The coincidence of name and trade is a happy one, and the house is an intact record of how a family in that business chose to live.

The four structures went up in close succession. The Agency's database dates the storehouse to 1939 and the main house to 1940, and places the annex and the gate and wall at around 1940.

The prefecture notes that none of the buildings has been much altered, and values the Kiwata Family Residence as a fine example of modern Japanese-style domestic architecture. What makes it worth attention is completeness: a prewar household laid out in one campaign, from street gate to back storehouse, still standing as a set.

Four Registrations

All four Kiwata Family Residence structures entered the national register in the 75th round, on 21 June 2013, under consecutive numbers 30-0171 to 30-0174. Each is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency's database gives these dates and sizes:

• Main House (30-0171): 1940, single-storey timber house with a tiled roof, 164 square meters in plan
• Annex (30-0172): around 1940, timber, single-storey with a partial second floor, tiled roof, 84 square meters
• Storehouse (30-0173): 1939, two-storey earthen-walled storehouse with a tiled roof, 33 square meters
• Gate and Wall (30-0174): around 1940, a timber gate 3.8 meters wide under tiles, and a tile-capped brick wall 21 meters long in total

Layers from Street to Garden

The plot of the Kiwata Family Residence faces a road to the south. The gate stands directly in line with the front door of the main house, and the wall runs out on either side, turning corners as it closes off the street frontage.

The main house sits in the middle of the lot, facing south. Behind it, across a small courtyard, is the annex, and behind the annex the storehouse, its ridge running east to west. Gate, house, annex, storehouse: the buildings stack up one behind another as you move away from the road.

The western half of the main house is given over to tatami rooms that look onto the garden, wrapped by a veranda. The street sees a composed gate and wall; inside, the reception rooms open to the garden; farther back come a tea-room annex and a fireproof store. It is an unusually legible cross-section of a well-to-do prewar city home.

Visiting and Getting There

The Kiwata Family Residence is privately owned and not open to the public. Visitors cannot enter the grounds, and in the course of research no regular opening of any of the four buildings could be found in prefectural or city listings.

From the road you can see the gate and the wall that curves away on either side of it. The main house, annex and storehouse stand behind the gate, so only glimpses reach the street. This is a residential neighborhood; please stay on the public road and keep noise and photography considerate of the people who live here.

The nearest stop is Horidome on the Wakayama Bus network. Routes from both JR Wakayama Station and Nankai Wakayamashi Station pass through Horidome by way of the Prefectural Office and the Red Cross Medical Center stops. From JR Wakayama Station the ride takes roughly 20 minutes, depending on the route and time of day.