A magnificent nagaya-mon (long gatehouse) from the Edo period. This was the birthplace of Kayano Sanpei, one of the Ako Forty-Seven Ronin. You can feel this history along the Saigoku Kaido road. Kayano Sanpei's grave is also in a nearby cemetery. A magnificent nagaya-mon from the Edo period. The birthplace of Kayano Sanpei, one of the Ako ronin. Along the Saigoku Kaido, you can feel history like this. Kayano Sanpei's grave is also in a nearby cemetery.

I'd been curious because of the place name Kayano Sanpei-san I didn't know who that was so it was educational

Kayano itself has old, impressive mansions to see, and this place blends right into that townscape.

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For generations the Kayano family held power as the lords of the area around what is now Shiba, Minoh City, and the site is designated a prefectural historic site as the "Site of the Residence of Loyal Retainer Kayano Sanpei," managed by the local neighborhood association. What remains as a historic site is the front gate and the room where Sanpei took his own life. Around Showa 15, a commemorative society was formed and efforts to preserve the site gained momentum. However, with the end of the war, it all cooled off at once. Even Sanpei's name was on the verge of being forgotten, but a movement spread among locals to protect this patriot of their hometown, and during the postwar land reform, they turned the residence site, whose owner had become an absentee landlord, into a makeshift farmhouse to keep it from passing into others' hands. Since managing the site privately is very difficult, the 80 tsubo including the gate and the room of the suicide were handed over by the family head to be managed by the neighborhood association. In Showa 48 (1973), it was designated a historic site by Osaka Prefecture. Also, materials related to Sanpei are displayed in the management building "Kensentei." In the northwest corner of the former residence grounds, there is also a monument engraved with his death poem. ■Address　3-10-4 Kayano, Minoh City ■Closed　Mondays (Tuesday if Monday is a holiday), December 28 to January 4 ■Admission　Free

Even though I live locally, I didn't know anything. There's even a bus stop called "Kayano Sanpei-mae," and I'd wonder what it meant, but I never actually tried to look into it. This time I visited here and Kayano Sanpei's grave nearby, and I went, ohh, so that's how it was, so that's what it meant, and at the same time I felt like I'd gotten a little smarter, which made me happy. ( =＾ω＾)