Gokasho Kondo

Locally knownKnown to people who live here. Not in the international guidebooks.

Researched and written by Hinato

Omi merchantsGokashopreservation districtsanpo yoshiHigashiomi

Photo: 663highland / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5) · original

Shiga keeps its history in places like Gokasho Kondo rather than in museums about it.

Omi merchants were the trading class that went out from this plain across Japan from the seventeenth century, working on a principle they stated as three-way satisfaction: good for the seller, good for the buyer, good for the world. Several of Japan's largest trading houses and department stores descend from them. Gokasho Kondo is where they came home to.

The village is an Important Preservation District of white-walled storehouses, hedged lanes and a canal with carp in it, and four of the merchants' own residences are open — Tonomura Shigeru, Tonomura Uhei, Nakae Junguro and Fujii Hikoshiro. What they show is restraint: the families were extremely rich and the houses are large but deliberately plain, because ostentation was bad for business in the places they traded.

Plan your visit

Hours

Merchant residences 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM | Preservation district open at all hours

Closed: Varies — confirm before visiting

Time to allow

2–3 hours

Admission

¥600 adults for a three-house combined ticket | ¥300 children | Group rates ¥500 and ¥250 for 20 or more | Free to walk the preservation district

Best time to visit

Year-round | Late November for autumn colour in the gardens

Finding your way there

Getting there in detail

A combined ticket for three houses costs ¥600 adults and ¥300 children, with group rates of ¥500 and ¥250 for 20 or more and free entry on presentation of a disability certificate. Closed Mondays except public holidays, the day after public holidays, and December 28 to January 4.

Historical notes & tips

**Buy the three-house ticket.** ¥600 covers Tonomura Shigeru, Tonomura Uhei and Nakae Junguro. The Fujii Hikoshiro house is a short distance away and ticketed separately. **Look at how plain they are.** Enormous houses with almost no display. The merchants traded in places where a Shiga outsider showing wealth would have been a problem, and the architecture is the record of that discipline. **Sanpo yoshi is not a slogan invented for tourists.** Good for the seller, the buyer and the world, stated in the seventeenth century, and it is the founding principle several present-day Japanese corporations still cite. **The canal and the hedges are the walk.** Free, and quieter than the houses. Carp in the water and clipped hedges along the lanes. **Tonomura Shigeru was a novelist.** His house is also a literary museum, which makes it the most interesting of the three if you only do one. **Combine with the Kotosanzan temples.** Kongorinji and the other two are 20 minutes east and are the region's autumn draw.

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