Chikushi Jogakuen

Chikushi Jogakuen: three tea buildings on a Fukuoka school campus

Chikushi Jogakuen (筑紫女学園) is a girls' junior and senior high school founded in 1907 in Kego, Chuo Ward, Fukuoka City, whose tea room Senshinan of 1940, its waiting arbor, and the tea pavilion Kofutei of 1955 were entered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 28 October 2011.

According to the school corporation's own history, Chikushi Jogakuen began as the private Chikushi Girls' High School, opened in 1907 by a priest of the Honganji branch of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism. In 1900 he had gone to San Francisco to lead the denomination's mission in North America, and the school says that seeing the hardship of Japanese women there convinced him that girls' education was his calling.

The Kego campus gained an auditorium in 1924. Senshinan was completed in 1940 and Kofutei in 1955; in between, in 1951, the school became the Chikushi Jogakuen educational corporation and took its present name. The corporation also runs Chikushi Jogakuen University in Dazaifu, but all three registered buildings stand on the junior and senior high school campus in central Fukuoka.

A tea ceremony club with four schools

The tea rooms at Chikushi Jogakuen are working buildings rather than relics. An issue of the school bulletin (No. 49) describes a tea ceremony club divided among four traditions: Omotesenke, practised almost since the school's founding; Urasenke and the Dai Nippon Chado Gakkai, added around 1950; and the Fujikage school of sencha, steeped green tea, which joined in 1971.

Club members practise in Senshinan and Kofutei, and the bulletin notes that every session begins by sliding open the wooden storm shutters. The club holds a tea gathering on the school's founding day; the school magazine records an anniversary tea held on 13 May 1953. The bulletin also credits the school's second principal, a student of tea who kept company with tea masters, with leaving the club much of its collection of hanging scrolls and utensils.

For the anniversary gathering, seats were set up not only in the two tea rooms but also in other school halls, including a kitchen classroom. Small Senshinan, with its tea room and preparation room, and Kofutei, built around large tatami rooms, give the club two very different places to work.

Layout and dates of the Chikushi Jogakuen buildings

The three buildings of Chikushi Jogakuen were registered on the same day under consecutive numbers: Senshinan 40-0069, the waiting arbor 40-0070 and Kofutei 40-0071. All three qualify as contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places Senshinan in the northeast corner of the campus, the waiting arbor to its southeast and Kofutei to its south, so the group stands together in one corner of the grounds.

Senshinan and the waiting arbor date from 1940 and Kofutei from 1955, and all three were renovated in 2003. Their building areas are 123 square metres for Kofutei, 38 square metres for Senshinan and only 1.4 square metres for the waiting arbor. Each building has its own page with details of its construction.

Visiting the Chikushi Jogakuen tea rooms

The Chikushi Jogakuen tea rooms stand inside a working school. The school's website includes Senshinan and Kofutei among its facilities, but as of 27 October 2026 it lists no public open days and no arrangement for visitors to see them. The campus cannot be entered without permission, so anyone hoping to see the buildings should contact the school in advance and ask about photography at the same time.

The school has no visitor parking and asks people to come by public transport. The nearest station is Sakurazaka on the Fukuoka City Subway Nanakuma Line, about 7 minutes on foot. The Nanakuma Line reaches Sakurazaka from Hakata Station in about 10 minutes without changing trains, or from Tenjin-minami in about 6 minutes. From Akasaka Station on the Airport Line the walk takes about 13 minutes, and from the Akasaka 2-chome Nishitetsu bus stop about 5 minutes.

Names and addresses for Chikushi Jogakuen

The registered names are 筑紫女学園洗心庵 (Chikushi Jogakuen Senshinan), 筑紫女学園待合 (Chikushi Jogakuen Machiai, here rendered Chikushi Jogakuen Waiting Arbor) and 筑紫女学園香風亭 (Chikushi Jogakuen Kofutei, Kōfūtei). The school writes its own name in English as Chikushi Jogakuen, and these pages follow that spelling.

The Agency's database records the location as 2-24-3 Kego, Chuo Ward. The school gives its address as 2-8-1 Kego, Chuo Ward, Fukuoka, which is the one to use for maps and directions.