Osawa Family Residence

Photo: Wikimedia Commons（CC BY-SA 3.0）

Built in 1792 (Kansei 4) by the wealthy merchant Nishimura Hanemon, originally from Omi Province, as the storehouse-style shop of his kimono-fabric business "Omiya." When a third of the town burned in the great Kawagoe Fire of 1893, this building drew attention as one of the rare structures to survive, and it went on to inspire Kawagoe merchants to compete in building their own kurazukuri storehouse shops. It is considered the oldest surviving kurazukuri building in Kawagoe and among the oldest in the Kanto region, and was designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1971. With a full two-story structure whose ground floor served as the "mise" (shop space), its plain, functional design is carefully preserved and open to the public today as the origin point of Ichibangai's kurazukuri architecture. Inside, visitors can see part of the original floor plan and tools used when it was a working merchant house, getting an up-close sense of the structure and fireproofing ingenuity of kurazukuri architecture. Comparing it with the other kurazukuri merchant houses along Ichibangai as you walk makes it easier to appreciate how the architectural style changed over time.