Yokan Nagaya (French House)

Introduction

Yokan Nagaya, also called the French House, is an unusual shape among the Kitano villas: two symmetrical terrace blocks joined into one row, with weatherboard walls in oil paint. It was never a merchant's private residence but an apartment building let to foreign residents, and because it is a terrace, the visit moves through a sequence of former tenancies rather than one grand house. The furnishings are consistently French Art Nouveau, from the circle of Samuel Bing, while the glass centres on the floral masters Emile Galle and the Daum brothers, set off by the bright southern-French palette of the first floor. Upstairs the best-known pieces are early Louis Vuitton travelling trunks, shown beside installations made from the old apartment rooms, which together evoke the age of sea travel remarkably completely. It is often confused with two neighbours: it is neither the Kobe Kitano Museum (the 1898 US consular residence) nor Uroko no Ie. Its official name is Yokan Nagaya (French House), written in Japanese as 洋館長屋（仏蘭西館）. Admission is JPY 550, with hours to 18:00 from April to September and 17:00 in winter, open daily. Older descriptions give a different date, call it a merchant's private house and mention a costume display and a cafe garden, none of which matches the building; what you come for is a rented apartment block refilled, room by room, with a coherent Art Nouveau collection.

✨ Highlights

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