Experience the Lives of Mino Merchants and the Region’s History
Located within Udatsu Old Town, the Former Imai Family Residence and Mino City Museum brings you inside one of the largest surviving merchant townhouse compounds in Mino, built in the late Edo period (19th century), alongside a museum that explores the city’s history, culture, and industries.
Once the home of a prosperous washi wholesaler, the residence is now open to the public as a cultural property—a place to step into the live-work world shaped by the paper trade.
At the Former Imai Family Residence, you can walk through a spacious merchant compound—main house, earthen storehouses, and garden—and see a live-work layout typical of the time.
The floor plan reveals smart, merchant-specific design; period furnishings and displays illuminate how wealthy paper dealers supported the production and distribution of Mino washi.
Exhibits also explain the district’s signature udatsu fire walls and the commercial practices of the era, turning the streetscape outside into a story you can read indoors.
The Mino City Museum presents multi-faceted exhibits on the region’s history—from the origins and techniques of Mino washi (part of Japan’s papermaking tradition inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014) to river transport along the Nagara River, and the achievements of local pioneers who shaped Mino’s development.
It places Mino’s paper economy in context and deepens what you see on your walk through Udatsu.
Taken together, the residence and museum connect everyday life, commerce, and architecture in the late Edo period, showing how Mino’s paper powered the city’s prosperity and how merchants actually lived and worked.
It’s the ideal stop to make sense of the Udatsu streetscape.
