Former Ayukawa Elementary School

Four Timber School Buildings Built for a Village Junior High

The Former Ayukawa Elementary School (旧鮎川小学校, Kyū Ayukawa Shōgakkō) is a group of wooden school buildings in Machimura, Yurihonjo City, Akita Prefecture, built in 1953 and 1954, whose indoor gymnasium and North, Central and South Buildings were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 23, 2012.

The site lies in the Yuri district of Yurihonjo, the area that was Yuri Town before the municipal merger. Three long classroom wings and a gymnasium stand parallel to one another on a single campus at Narusedai, and all four belong to Yurihonjo City.

The name says "elementary school", but the buildings were put up for a junior high. Since July 2018 every one of them has been in use as the Chokaisan Kino Omocha Kan (鳥海山 木のおもちゃ館), a municipal center for play and learning with locally made wooden toys, so walking through the toy center means walking through the Former Ayukawa Elementary School itself. It opened as the Chokaisan Wooden Toy Museum and took its current name on April 1, 2023.

A Village Budget, and Fifty Years of Pupils

Ayukawa Junior High School was founded in 1947 under Japan's postwar school reforms, but it had no building of its own and shared space with Ayukawa Elementary School. The old village of Ayukawa built it a campus over two fiscal years, 1953 and 1954. When the work was finished in 1954, the junior high moved in and became independent.

According to the Yurihonjo City Board of Education, the project cost 29,959,494 yen. That came to 74% of the village's entire budget for those two years, which totaled 40,186,000 yen, and no national subsidy was involved. For a small rural village this was an extraordinary commitment.

The junior high did not stay long. On April 1, 1970 it was merged into Yuri Junior High School, and Ayukawa Elementary School moved into the empty classrooms. The buildings served the elementary school for the next 34 years, until it too was merged, into Yuri Elementary School, on April 1, 2004. Counting both schools, children studied here for about half a century.

After the closure, local residents and former pupils living outside Akita kept the buildings maintained. A volunteer body, the Ayu no Kaze Executive Committee, was set up in July 2008 to organize that work, and in April 2010 the campus hosted the second national summit on reviving closed schools. In 2022 Akita Prefecture included the Former Ayukawa Elementary School in its list of 50 pieces of infrastructure to pass on to the future.

A Symmetrical Plan With Four Gables Facing the Schoolyard

Each of the four buildings is a long, single-storey block running east to west. The Central Building, which held the principal's office, forms the axis. The North and South Buildings sit at roughly equal distances on either side of it, and the gymnasium closes the north end of the campus. All four turn their gable ends east toward the schoolyard, so from the playing field you see four matching gables lined up one behind another.

Three entrance halls, evenly spaced and of the same size, link the buildings. Only the central one was treated as a formal front entrance for staff and visitors.

In every classroom wing the classrooms face south and the corridor runs along the north side, an arrangement chosen to bring daylight into the rooms.

City records note that old photographs show the same building type (timber frame, gabled roof, pantiles, horizontal board cladding) at the first Nishitakizawa Elementary School, built by Nishitakizawa village in 1908, and at the first Ayukawa Elementary School of 1915. The Former Ayukawa Elementary School therefore carries a school design from the late Meiji and Taisho periods into the years after the Second World War.

How the Four Buildings Are Made

All four are single-storey timber buildings with gabled roofs covered in interlocking pantiles. The outer walls are clad in charred cedar lapped siding, with some sections finished in scored mortar. The boards are painted dark brown, while posts, window frames and vents are picked out in white, giving the campus a crisp two-tone look.

The roofs rest on Western-style king post trusses. Each truss spans the full depth of classroom and corridor without an intermediate post, so a classroom and its stretch of corridor form one structural unit. The gymnasium roof is framed the same way.

Inside, the finish is thoroughly Japanese in feeling: cedar floorboards, vertical board wainscoting and batten-and-board ceilings. The floors were sanded and the gymnasium exterior repainted in 1990 and 1991, and in 1996 and 1997 the outer windows of the classroom wings were replaced with metal sashes. The ceilings have been painted over. Otherwise, the city says, the floors, wainscoting and sliding doors and windows are original, and the grain of Akita cedar is visible throughout.

Yurihonjo City describes the Former Ayukawa Elementary School as one of the few wooden schools from the decade after the war to keep almost its original size, and as among the largest wooden school buildings still standing in Akita Prefecture.

Moving Through the Campus

Covered links and entrance halls connect the four buildings of the Former Ayukawa Elementary School, so once you take off your shoes you can walk the whole campus indoors.

Inside the Chokaisan Kino Omocha Kan there is a paid zone and a free zone. Reception and the paid play areas are in the North Building and the gymnasium. The Central and South Buildings are mostly free: the café, the shop and the classrooms opened as rest rooms can be used without an admission ticket.

Wooden play equipment has stood in the courtyard between the wings since 2021. It is closed in rain and for the four winter months, December through March.

Because the toy center uses the old school as it is, knots, joints and the odd splinter included, visitors are asked to bring indoor shoes. Children's indoor shoes (500 yen) and adult slippers (300 yen) are sold at reception. Smoking is banned across the whole site to protect the wooden buildings.

Getting to the Former Ayukawa Elementary School

By train, take the JR line from Akita Station to Ugo-Honjo Station (about 45 minutes), then change to the Yuri Kogen Railway Chokai Sanroku Line for Ayukawa Station (about 12 minutes). A dedicated shuttle bus covers the last leg to the Former Ayukawa Elementary School in about 5 minutes. It runs free of charge on weekends and public holidays; on weekdays the transfer must be booked in advance by calling 0184-74-9070.

By car, the school is about 10 minutes from the Honjo interchange on the Nihonkai-Tohoku Expressway and about 1 hour from Akita Airport. Parking is free, with 110 spaces behind the sports ground, 70 at the Ayukawa riverside plaza (including 5 for large vehicles) and 20 behind the school.

From March through November the center opens at 9:00 a.m. and closes at 4:00 p.m. From December through February it opens at 10:00 a.m. and closes at 4:00 p.m. Last entry is 3:30 p.m. all year. It is closed on Thursdays in the March to November season (on Wednesday instead when Thursday is a public holiday) and on both Wednesdays and Thursdays in winter, as well as over the New Year period and on maintenance days in February and September.

Admission was revised on April 1, 2026 and is now 810 yen for adults (junior high age and up) and 610 yen for children from 1 year old through elementary school. Groups of 15 or more get 100 yen off per person, and holders of a disability certificate plus one companion pay half. The center suggests allowing about 3 hours. Fees and hours can change, so check the official site before you go.

Photos and video are allowed inside. Flash and tripods left standing for long periods are not.