Former Morita Bank Head Office

A Concrete Bank in a Kitamaebune Port

The Former Morita Bank Head Office (旧森田銀行本店, Kyū-Morita Ginkō Honten, also romanised Kyu-Morita Ginko Honten) is a reinforced-concrete bank building in Minamihonmachi, Mikuni-chō, Sakai City, Fukui Prefecture, dated by the national register to Taishō 8 (1919) and entered on Japan's National Register of Tangible Cultural Properties (buildings) on 12 December 1997.

Mikuni sits at the mouth of the Kuzuryū River, and for centuries it was the port through which Echizen Province traded. Its wealth came from the kitamaebune, the cargo ships that worked the Sea of Japan coast between Hokkaido and Osaka, and the Morita family were among the merchant houses that ran them.

Shipping was not going to last. Morita Saburōemon read the decline correctly and moved the family capital into banking, founding the Morita Bank in Meiji 27 (1894). The bank did well, and this building was raised as its new head office.

Its date needs a word of explanation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs register gives Taishō 8, or 1919. Sakai City and the building's operator both date the completion ceremony to Taishō 9, or 1920. The likeliest reading is that the register records the year the structure went up while the local accounts record the year it opened for business, but visitors will see both figures cited and should know that the discrepancy is real rather than a misprint.

The register describes one structure of reinforced concrete, two storeys, with a building footprint of 163 square metres.

Yamada Shichigoro's Classical Envelope

The registration criterion applied was that the building is a model of its kind of design, and it went on the register in the seventh round of listings, under number 18-0004. That low number places it among the earliest properties in Fukui to be registered after the system began in 1996. The official notice followed on 8 January 1998, three weeks after the registration date itself.

The designer was Yamada Shichigorō, an engineer whose other work includes the Yokohama Port Opening Memorial Hall and the Nagasaki prefectural office building. The master carpenter was a local man, Yotsuori Yutaka. That pairing of a nationally known engineer with a Mikuni craftsman shows in the finished building, which handles its classical vocabulary with confidence but keeps the detailing warm.

Outside, the walls carry brown-toned tile and artificial stone, worked into a composition that Japanese sources describe as kindai fukkō-shiki, a revival manner drawing on European classicism. The windows were fitted with roll-up shutters, a mechanism close to the cutting edge of Japanese building practice in 1919. Look up and there are chimneys and ornament on the roofline.

The register calls this an early full-scale reinforced-concrete building for the prefecture and rates its quality highly. Sakai City and the operator put the claim more strongly, describing it as the oldest surviving reinforced-concrete structure in Fukui. Both statements can be read together: it was early, it was ambitious, and nothing older of its construction type is still standing locally.

Inside, and How to Visit

The interior is the reason to come. The ground floor holds a banking hall open through both storeys, with private rooms beside it, and a meeting room sits behind the upper level. Above the banking hall the plaster ceiling is worked into deep relief, white against timber, and it is the single thing most visitors remember. The meeting room adds inlay work. The vault door survives, as do the chandeliers.

The bank itself did not survive as a bank. Morita Bank merged into Fukui Bank, and the building carried on as the Fukui Bank Mikuni branch until age caught up with it. In Heisei 6 (1994) it passed to what was then the town of Mikuni, which is today part of Sakai City. Restoration followed a detailed survey, and the building opened to the public in July 1999.

Admission is free. Opening hours run from 9:00 to 17:00, extended to 22:00 on days with an evening event, since the hall is used for exhibitions and concerts. It closes on Mondays, except when a Monday is a public holiday, and from 29 December to 3 January, with occasional closures for maintenance. The operator is a general incorporated association, Mikuni Kaisho, reachable on 0776-82-0299.

Photography deserves a specific note, because the rules differ by location. Photographing the exterior is unrestricted. Photographing the interior for press or broadcast requires an approach to Mikuni Kaisho in advance with a written outline of the date, purpose, locations and intended use; a staff member attends, tripod feet must be padded, and open flame is prohibited anywhere inside.

Getting there is easy. Mikuni Station on the Echizen Railway Mikuni Awara line is a seven-minute walk. From Awara-Onsen Station, take the Keifuku bus toward Mikuni Station and get off at Mikuni Ekimae, roughly twenty-five minutes, or about twenty by car or taxi. Drivers come off the Hokuriku Expressway at Kanazu interchange, around twenty-five minutes away. The building faces Mikuni Minato Kitamae-dōri, the old main street, so the surrounding merchant houses are part of the same walk.

One address caution: the national register lists the property as Minamihonmachi 3-217-2, a cadastral number, while the facility publishes its address as Minamihonmachi 3-3-26. These point to the same building.