Former Ani Mine Foreign Engineers' Residence

A Brick House Built for Foreign Engineers

The Former Ani Mine Foreign Engineers' Residence (旧阿仁鉱山外国人官舎, Kyū Ani Kōzan Gaikokujin Kansha) is a single-storey brick building at Aniginzan in Kitaakita City, Akita Prefecture, completed in 1882 and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 19 March 1990. It is open to the public as the Kitaakita City Ani Ijinkan (北秋田市阿仁異人館), a name that translates loosely as the foreigners' house.

Two such residences once stood here. The second occupied the site where the Ani branch of the Kitaakita City fire department now sits, and it burned down. What remains is one building, five rooms inside, wrapped on all four sides by a wooden veranda.

The Ani mine had been worked since medieval times, first for gold, later for silver and copper. After the Meiji Restoration it came under direct government management, and the new administration hired foreign engineers to bring the operation up to European standards. German mining engineers arrived in 1879, and this house was built for them three years later.

Older Than the Buildings Japan Usually Credits

The Agency for Cultural Affairs classifies the building under modern industry, transport and civil engineering, designation number 02235, and states its significance plainly: among surviving brick dwellings in Japan, this is one of the oldest, and it documents one strand of the country's industrial modernisation.

The date is the point. Japan's best-known Meiji Western-style buildings, the Rokumeikan and the Holy Resurrection Cathedral known as Nikolai-dō, both came later. A brick house with a European plan was standing in a mountain valley in northern Akita before either of them opened in Tokyo. For the people of Ani, who had never seen a European or a European building, the effect was reportedly considerable.

Recognition came in stages. Akita Prefecture designated the building in 1956. National designation followed in 1990.

One caution about names. The engineer credited with the design is written as Metsugeru (メツゲル) on the facility's own website and as Adolf Mekkeru (アドルフ・メッケル) on the Kitaakita City website. The two spellings almost certainly point to the same German engineer, but the sources do not agree, and the attribution of the design to him is itself reported as tradition rather than documented fact.

What the Building Shows

Look at the brick first. It was not imported. The clay came from the Shimohama area near what is now the Ani riverside park, fired locally, which means the walls are made of Ani soil shaped into a European form.

The building faces east. The roof is gabled, finished today in asphalt shingle. Windows are semicircular at the head and operate as sash windows, sliding vertically, with shutters on the outside. The veranda that runs around all four sides is timber, and a projecting section on the east elevation is recorded as an attached part of the structure. Floor area comes to 267.2 square metres.

The combination is worth pausing over. Sash windows and a wraparound veranda belong to the colonial architecture that Europeans built across Asia in the nineteenth century. Local brick, a gabled roof, and a snow-country valley setting belong to Akita. Neither reads as a compromise.

After the German engineers left, the house did not stand empty. It served the mining bureau's enterprise section, then as a guest house, then as lodgings. Earthquakes in 1982 and 1983, the Moriyoshi-san shallow-focus quake and the Nihonkai-Chūbu earthquake, cracked and partly collapsed sections of brick wall. The town of Ani acquired the building in 1983 and carried out repairs, after which it opened to visitors. The 2005 municipal merger changed the name from Ani Town to Kitaakita City.

Visiting, and What Is Next Door

Opening hours are 9:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:30. The site closes on Mondays, moving to the following day when a Monday falls on a public holiday, and over the New Year period from 29 December to 3 January. Both the facility website and Kitaakita City list admission as free. Some travel guides still quote an adult fee of 400 yen, so if a price matters to your planning, telephone 0186-82-3658 to confirm the current arrangement.

Guided tours of the interior were previously offered without charge on ten days' notice. The facility website states that guiding is currently suspended.

The Ani Local Culture Preservation Hall stands next to the residence, and the two are joined by an underground passage whose walls were finished to suggest a mine tunnel. The hall displays tools and ore from the mine, mineral specimens including chalcopyrite, survey reports left by the German engineers, and masks and costumes used in Neko Bangaku, a folk performing art of the Ani district recognised at national level.

Access is easier than the location suggests. Anigō Station on the Akita Nairiku Jūkan Railway, the private line that runs through the mountains between Takanosu and Kakunodate, is about a five-minute walk away. The train ride is part of the experience.

Two addresses circulate for the site. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records 41-23 Shimoshinmachi, Anigin-zan; the facility gives 41-22. They refer to the same place.