is the former home of post-war Japanese bureaucrat

Jirō Shirasu was a Japanese bureaucrat and businessman. Biography He was born in Ashiya in Hyogo Prefecture and studied at Clare College, Cambridge. During the Occupation he was a member of Shigeru Yoshida's government. He is particularly remembered in J ...

and his wife

Masako Shirasu Masako Shirasu (白洲正子, Shirasu Masako) (January 7, 1910 – December 26, 1998) was a Japanese author and collector of fine arts. Her husband was the diplomat Jirō Shirasu. Biography Shirasu was born in 1910 in the Nagatachō district of ...

, located in

Machida, Tokyo is a Cities of Japan, city located in West Tokyo, the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 428,851, and a population density of 6,000 persons per km². The total area of the city was . Geography ...

, to the west of downtown Tokyo. The name was derived from an amalgamation of ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

'' for the former provinces of Musashi and

Sagami Sagami may refer to: * Sagami, an 11th-century ''waka'' poet *Sagami Province, an old province in Japan *Sagami River, a river in Kanagawa and Yamanashi *Sagami Bay, a bay south of Kanagawa Prefecture in Honshū *Sagami Line, a railway roughly along ...

, as its location is near the border between the two provinces. The house was a traditional farm house, located in what was then a rural area of

Minamitama District, Tokyo Minamitama (南多摩郡, ''Minamitama-gun'', South Tama) was a district or county (''gun'') of Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Fo ...

. It was acquired by the Shirasu family in October 1942 while Jirō Shirasu was still a businessman working for the predecessor of

Nichirei is one of Japan's top producers of frozen foods and a leader in cold storage warehousing, headquartered in Tokyo. Operating through around 80 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide, its businesses include processed food; logistics; marine product ...

Corporation. Predicting that his residence in

Shinjuku is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative centre, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world (Shinjuku Station) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration ...

in downtown Tokyo would be endangered due to the worsening war situation in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and to avoid possible food shortages. His foresight paid off when his Shinjuku house was destroyed in the 1945

bombing of Tokyo The was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Force during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing ...

. In the post-war era, he continued to use the house while working with

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Stat ...

Shigeru Yoshida (22 September 1878 – 20 October 1967) was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954. Yoshida was one of the longest-serving Japanese prime ministers, and is the third-long ...

in negotiations with the American occupation authorities. Jirō Shirasu died in 1985 and his wife in 1998. The house was preserved by the city of Machida as a memorial museum to the couple, and is kept as it appeared when they lived there, with items varying according to the seasons. The house is a wooden structure constructed in the traditional style with a thatched roof, surrounded by

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

References

External links

* official home page
Go Tokyo , Buaiso
Museums in Tokyo Historic house museums in Japan Machida, Tokyo {{Japan-museum-stub