Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence: a lacquerware wholesaler's house by the Kuroe landing

The Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence (尾崎林太郎家住宅, Ozaki Rintarō-ke Jūtaku) is the house of a lacquerware wholesaler in Kuroe, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, and its four buildings, a mid-Edo reception wing and a main house and two storehouses of the Taisho era, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 12, 2001.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Ozaki were an old family who served as ōjōya, the headmen placed over a group of villages, during the Edo period, and who went into the lacquerware wholesale trade in the Meiji era. The Kishu Lacquerware Cooperative adds that the family were jishi, rural samurai retainers of the Kishu Tokugawa domain, and held posts such as magistrate of Ōsugiyama in Ise Province, magistrate of works on the Arida River and intendant of Ama District. One source speaks of village office, the other of service to the domain; both point to a family of standing.

The house stands just south of the old landing on the Kuroe River, once an important point for shipping by sea. Wakayama Prefecture's sightseeing guide traces Kishu lacquerware to bowls made here in the Muromachi and Azuchi-Momoyama periods, and notes that the craft grew further under the protection of the Kishu domain in the Edo period. For a merchant who sent lacquer goods out by boat, a site beside the landing made obvious sense.

The four registered buildings

All four buildings of the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence were registered on the same day, with consecutive numbers: 30-0043 for the main house, 30-0044 for the reception wing, 30-0045 for the three-story storehouse and 30-0046 for the front storehouse. Each was registered under the same criterion, as a building that has become a model of its type.

The reception wing is the oldest. Its formal rooms are thought to date to the mid-Edo period, which the Agency gives as 1661 to 1750, and they were altered in the middle of the Taisho era. The main house belongs to the mid-Taisho period, which the Agency writes as 1912 to 1925. A ceremonial offering from the ridge-raising of the three-story storehouse dates it to 1924, and the front storehouse is believed to have gone up at about the same time.

So the property is an Edo-period reception wing kept in place while the house around it was renewed in the Taisho era. Two storehouses for the business built within roughly a year of each other suggest how well the trade was doing at the time.

How the Ozaki property is laid out

The plot is large, about 500 tsubo in the traditional measure. A Nagayamon gatehouse, which is not itself registered, opens onto the road on the east side. The three-story storehouse stands between that gate and the main house, which sits in the middle of the plot facing east. The reception wing extends from the back of the main house on the west, and the front storehouse lines the south edge, its ridge running east to west like that of the three-story storehouse.

The Agency notes that the reception wing was skilfully joined to the plan of the main house during the mid-Taisho rebuilding. Because the main house combined a shop with living quarters, the layout suggests a clear division: business at the front, past the gate, and guests received in the formal rooms at the back.

Each building of the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence has its own page with details of its construction.

Visiting the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence

No information on public openings or interior visits to the Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence could be found, and no admission fee or opening hours are published. The Kishu Lacquerware Cooperative features the Ozaki house on its page about the Kuroe townscape but says nothing about receiving visitors.

If you go, view the house from the road and do not step inside the gate or onto the grounds. Please do not linger at the entrance or point a camera into the property, out of consideration for the people who live there.

The house lies in the old quarter of Kuroe, about 1.2 kilometers in a straight line from both Kuroe and Kainan stations on the JR Kinokuni Line (Kisei Main Line), a figure calculated from map coordinates.

Names and spellings

The registered names are Ozaki Rintaro Family Residence Main House (主屋, shuoku), Reception Wing (座敷, zashiki), Three-Story Storehouse (三階蔵, sankaigura) and Front Storehouse (前蔵, maegura). The family name is also written 尾﨑, with a variant form of the second character, as on the Kishu Lacquerware Cooperative's site.