The Sugiyama family is an old family, which continued for generations from the foundation of Jinaimachi, and successive heads of the family used name Chozaemon Sugiyama. They administered the town as one of the Hachinin-shu (8 administrators) throughout the Edo era.

The old family business is not clear, but after they obtained a brewery license in the 2^nd year of the Teikyo era (1685), As doing business as "Wataya", the family played a leading role in the “sake” brewing industry of Kawachi region from the Edo period to the middle of Meiji era.

They enjoyed rapid progress, increasing the production of sake from at first 30 koku (an old unit of rice volume, 1 koku = 47.654 U.S.gallons) , to 104 koku in the 10^th year of the Genroku era (1697) and to 1,103 koku in the 5^th year of the Tenmei era (1785). It is said that as many as 70 employees worked there in its prime.

The former residence of Sugiyama Family is also the birthplace of Isonokami Tsuyuko, a modern “tanka” (a Japanese traditional verse form of "Waka") poet of the Myojyo School during the Meiji era.
　　　　　　　

The residence plan in the Edo era shows that the vast building site occupied one block of the town., and that there were more than 10 buildings such as the main house with 4-layer roofs, a kitchen-cum-workshop with a cooking stove ("Kamado"), sake sellers and storehouses built side by side, including landscape gardens. The layout plan indicates the family’s prosperity.

The existing building is said to have been completed during 1734 - 1747, and the oldest part of this building is “Doma” (an earth-floored room) which was constructed in 1650. A reception room ("Zashiki") and the second story were added afterwards. As an interior decoration, the walls around the rooms are reddish Osaka style walls, and luxurious paintings on “fusuma” (Japanese paper sliding doors) are works of the painters belonging to the Kano School. There remain a "Ranma" or an openwork screen above the sliding partitions between two rooms and a modern spiral staircase.

The old merchants’s residences in Jinaimachi have plain structures like a farmhouse rather than a town house. For example, it has a big beam, which supports the hanging wall to stop smoke from the cooking stove.

The residence hands down the richness and culture of South Kawachi region in those days.The former residence of Sugiyama family is the oldest merchant’s house among these private houses, the largest in scale and superior in quality, therefore it was designated as an important cultural property on December 26th, 1983.

(link to）　a website on those residences designated as an important cultural assets of Japan

Ms. Tsuyuko Isonokami

The former residence of Sugiyama Family is also the birthplace of Ms. Isonokami Tsuyuko,a modern “tanka” (Japanese traditional verse) poet of the Myojyo School.

Isonokami’s actual name being Taka Sugiyama, she was born to Sugiyama famly in 1882. She was a tanka poet belonging to the Myojyo School and was famous for her beauty, sung in a folk song as “a daughter of a brewer in Tondabayashi, the most beautiful in Yamato and Kawachi regions”. Her prideful personality which confronted the contradiction of those days symbolizes the spirit of freedom, and is still living in the mind of the people.