Taki Gakuen Main Building

Taki Gakuen Main Building: A Tower-Crowned Modernist Schoolhouse from 1926

Tucked into a quiet corner of Konan City in northern Aichi Prefecture stands a building that has greeted students for nearly a century. The Main Building of Taki Gakuen, completed in December 1926, is a long, dignified, two-story reinforced concrete schoolhouse crowned by a clock tower that has become an enduring landmark of the surrounding neighborhood. Now registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property of Japan, it remains a working school facility — and on certain days, with advance reservation, it opens its doors to curious visitors who would like to step inside one of Japan's rarest registered cultural properties: a school classroom building that is still in active use.

Historical Background

The story of the building cannot be separated from the story of its founder, Taki Shinshiro (1868–1938). Born in Higashino village — the very land on which the school now stands — Taki rose to lead the family kimono and textile wholesale firm Takihyo, a Nagoya merchant house whose roots reach back to 1751. By the 1910s and 1920s he had become one of central Japan's most influential business figures, with interests stretching from Nagoya banking to the resort hotels of Gamagori on the Mikawa coast.

Why It Was Designated

The Main Building was registered on August 28, 2001 as a National Tangible Cultural Property under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. Three qualities stood out to the cultural property assessors.

First, the building is unusually intact. Reinforced concrete construction of this scale was still relatively new for private schools in regional Japan in the mid-1920s, and surviving examples in original condition are scarce. Second, the design is the work of Murase Kuninosuke, a graduate of the Koshu Gakko (now Kogakuin University) who had worked as a technical officer for the Imperial Japanese Army and the Ministry of Education before settling in Aichi. Murase was a personal acquaintance of Taki Shinshiro and also designed the school's auditorium and worked on Taki's Gamagori Hotel. Third, the central clock tower has, for generations, served as a visual anchor for the surrounding town — a daily public landmark visible across the rice fields and residential blocks of northern Konan.

The auditorium next to the Main Building, completed in 1933 and also designed by Murase, was registered on the very same day. The campus library, blending the original 1933 lower floor with a 1965 modernist upper floor, joined them on the cultural property register in 2017, completing what is now recognized as a small but cohesive ensemble of early Showa-era educational architecture.

Architectural Highlights

The Main Building stretches in a long, symmetrical line, with short wings projecting at each end and the central entrance pushed slightly forward. The building footprint covers approximately 1,482 square meters, making it one of the largest prewar private school buildings still standing in the region.

Visiting Information

Because the Main Building remains part of an active school campus, visits are arranged on a reservation-only basis through the school's Cultural Property Office. Walk-in visits are not accepted. Visitors are guided in small groups of up to five people and accompanied by staff throughout the tour, which typically lasts 45 to 50 minutes. Visitors are also able to see the auditorium and library, which together with the Main Building form the registered cultural property ensemble.

Reservations are taken via the application form on the school's website or by telephone (in Japanese) at 0587-56-2127, with reception desk hours of 9:00 to 15:00 on weekdays. Public open events are also held periodically — these are announced on the school's news page. Visitors are asked to be considerate of the daily school routine, to follow staff guidance throughout, and to take photographs in a way that avoids capturing students or staff in the frame.

The nearest train station is Konan Station on the Meitetsu Inuyama Line, about 1.5 kilometers (around a 20-minute walk) from campus. From central Nagoya, Konan Station is reached in under 30 minutes by limited express. Local Meitetsu buses also stop at "Taki Gakuen Mae," "Taki Gakuen Guchi," and "Taki Gakuen Kita," each within walking distance of the entrance gate.

Around the Area

Konan City and its neighbors offer a thoughtful day's worth of nearby attractions. Mandaraji, a Shinzan Pure Land Buddhist temple founded in 1329 by imperial decree of Emperor Go-Daigo, sits just to the north of the school district and is one of the most prestigious historic temples of the northern Owari region. Adjacent Mandaraji Park draws large crowds each spring for the Konan Wisteria Festival, when eleven varieties of wisteria flower across a 75-meter-long trellis from mid-April through early May.

A short distance away rises the Hotei Daibutsu, a privately built concrete Great Buddha that has become an unexpected local icon. Suitopia Konan, a public facility with a sky observation room, gives panoramic views over the Kiso River plain. Slightly further afield, the cherry-lined banks of the Kiso River — designated a Natural Monument — burst into bloom from late March, and the Twin Arch 138 tower in neighboring Ichinomiya offers an even higher vantage point. For those traveling by rental car, the historic castle town of Inuyama, with its national-treasure castle keep, lies just twenty minutes north.