The Bikan Historical Area in Kurashiki has many buildings known as “cultural properties.”
Among them, Kusudo House, located in Higashimachi, Kurashiki City, is a building that was registered as an Important Cultural Property (Building) of Japan in 1996 as the first in Okayama Prefecture, and whose main house was designated an Important Cultural Property of Kurashiki City in 2002.
We introduce the architectural features of Kusudo House, which has remained under the trade name “Hashimaya” since the Meiji period, as well as how it has been used in recent years.
The information presented was current when this article was published in October 2025. Please note that it may differ from current information.
What Are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (Buildings)?
Tangible cultural properties is a collective term for tangible cultural assets of high historical, artistic, or academic value, including buildings, crafts, sculptures, calligraphy, books, ancient documents, archaeological materials, and historical materials.
The national system for registering buildings as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (Buildings) was established for the following purposes.
Under an amendment to the Cultural Properties Protection Act that took effect on October 1, 1996, the “Cultural Property Registration System” was introduced. Under this system, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology registers cultural property buildings in the Cultural Property Registration Ledger when measures for their preservation and use are particularly necessary.
The system was created to ensure the broad transmission to future generations of the diverse and numerous modern-era and other cultural property buildings that face the threat of disappearing without receiving social recognition, due to recent national land development, urban planning, changes in lifestyles, and other factors. It provides flexible protective measures based primarily on a notification system and guidance and advice, complementing the existing designation system, which selects only the most important properties and provides strong restrictions, such as a permit system, along with extensive protection.
The Cultural Property Registration System began in 1996 following an amendment to the Cultural Properties Protection Act. As of September 2025, more than 10,000 buildings have been registered.
About Kusudo House
Kusudo House is located in Higashimachi, Kurashiki City, and is a kimono shop founded in 1869 that operates under the trade name “Hashimaya.”
The shop adopted the “to” from the name of its founder, Kusudo Tokukichi, as its trademark, and in 1906 became the first kimono shop in Kurashiki City to form a partnership company.
Higashimachi-dori in front of the shop is an old highway. The fact that it was a bustling street where bonnet buses also traveled from 1933 through the 1950s can be inferred from the streetlights in front of the shop facing inward.
The streetlights originally faced the old highway, but were turned inward to make it easier for bonnet buses to pass, it is said.
(Image courtesy of Hashimaya)
Okayama Prefecture’s First “Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building)”
The Cultural Property Registration System began in 1996, and Kusudo House became Okayama Prefecture’s first “Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building).”
The buildings, including the main house and storehouses, which tell the story of how machiya evolved in the modern era, were recognized for being preserved in excellent condition and retaining a sense of dignity. The following were registered at the same time:
- Main house (inner reception room section)
- Rice storehouse
- Charcoal storehouse
- Tool storehouse
- Roofed wooden fence
In 2002, the main house was also designated an Important Cultural Property by Kurashiki City.
Visited by Many Distinguished Guests
The third-generation head of the family, Kusudo Yohei, was close to Ohara Soichiro, who served as chair of the board of the Ohara Museum of Art. In addition to helping establish Okayama Mingei Promotion Co., Ltd., which promoted the Mingei movement, he welcomed many people associated with the movement who visited Kurashiki.
(Image courtesy of Hashimaya)
From left: Soichiro Ohara, British potter Bernard Leach, Yohei Kusudo, Mingei movement leader Soetsu Yanagi, and potter Shoji Hamada
(Image courtesy of Hashimaya)
(Image courtesy of Hashimaya)
The visitors were not limited to people associated with the Mingei movement.
Records also remain of visitors from overseas, including French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and German architect Walter Gropius and his wife Alma.
Kusudo House Today
The interior of Kusudo House is not generally open to the public, but six spaces are currently being put to new uses.
- Rice storehouse
atelier & salon Hashimaya - Tool storehouse
Kitchen of “atelier & salon Hashimaya” - Indigo storehouse
Kurashiki Architectural Studio Toru Narumura Design Office - North storehouse
Kurashiki Fint - Storehouse
Seijudo - Separate shop that sold meisen before the war
Kurashiki Kiln and Southern Italian Cuisine Hashimaya
Highlights of Kusudo House
Kusudo House has welcomed many distinguished guests and is carefully preserved as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property and an Important Cultural Property designated by Kurashiki City. Kusudo Keiko showed us around the residence, focusing on the main house, which is not usually open to the public.
An Exterior That Retains the Features of Edo-period Kurashiki Machiya While Revealing Modern Influences
A defining feature of “Hashimaya” is its two-story shop with a wooden, hon-gawara tiled roof, facing the street.
The second floor, known as a zushi-nikai, functioned much like a modern mezzanine. When the kimono business was thriving, staff who helped at the shop slept there, and it was also used for storage.
The building also features Kurashiki latticework, a design characteristic of Kurashiki architecture often found in machiya along the Kurashiki River.
The second-floor exterior walls are plastered with white plaster and surrounded by namako walls. Three mushiko windows have window frames and latticework coated in plaster.
Mushiko windows, a style seen in machiya in Kyoto and Osaka from the early Edo period, were introduced to Kurashiki in the Meiji period.
In this way, Kusudo House has a distinctive exterior that retains the features of Edo-period Kurashiki machiya while also reflecting modern influences from the Kamigata region.
A beautiful custom-made single pane of glass
Passing through the noren (traditional shop curtain) bearing the trademark character “to” (read as “Maruto”) and entering the shop, you can see the shop’s accounting counter through a large pane of glass.
During the Meiji period, it was difficult to make glass this large in Japan, so it was apparently brought all the way from Germany.
Documents that are actually used are kept at the accounting counter.
A courtyard with a satsuki azalea said to be about 250 years old
Between the shop and the living quarters stands a satsuki azalea tree said to be 250 years old.
From 1993 until the period of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 began, the “Hashimaya Satsuki Exhibition” was held alongside the public opening of the main house, allowing local residents to enjoy the azaleas together.
Near the entrance to the courtyard, a radio said to have broadcast the Emperor’s surrender announcement at the end of the war, and fabric said to have been given as a souvenir to the painter Kojima Torajiro when he traveled overseas, blend into the space as interior decor.
A rear reception room adorned with first-rate design
The rear reception room is laid with luxurious tatami mats topped with “Bingo omote”, made from carefully selected rushes with thick skins and a beautiful bluish, silvery-white sheen. It features an impressive formal alcove, staggered shelves, and a side alcove.
The alcove post is made of smooth cedar, while the post adjoining the tatami has a bamboo-shoot-shaped bevel. The flat floor is made of a single lacquered zelkova plank, and the ceiling boards are Yakusugi cedar that has reached a thousand years of age. The rear reception room, with its fusuma sliding doors once covered in gold and silver and its exquisite craftsmanship, is breathtaking.
The horizontal beam fitted to the lower part of the wall above the side alcove’s floor is called an “otoshi-gake” and is made from prized timber.
The ingenuity extends beyond the reception rooms to the veranda, where the eaves beam is made from a single cedar tree.
“Hiyasai,” the lanes of the Bikan Historical Area
Have you ever heard the word “hiyasai”?
This is a Kurashiki dialect word for lanes tucked behind the main streets of the old town, where tourists pass by, and shaded from the sun by the eaves (literally, “where the sun is shallow”).
Kusudo House also has a lane leading to the present-day “atelier & salon Hashimaya.”
The stone-paved lane remains as a reminder of the days when the landowners brought in large quantities of tenant farmers’ rice by handcart.
We spoke with Kusudo Keiko about the recent efforts to adaptively reuse cultural heritage buildings at Kusudo House.
Kusudo House details
| Name | Kusudo House |
|---|---|
| Address | 1-20 Higashimachi, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture |
| Website | Hashimaya |
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