Yamamoto Rock Machine (Former Yamamoto Iron Works) Self-Governing Dormitory Dining Hall and Recreation Room Building

Yamamoto Rock Machine Dormitory Dining Hall: Pressed-Steel Ceilings over the Canteen

The Yamamoto Rock Machine (Former Yamamoto Iron Works) Self-Governing Dormitory Dining Hall and Recreation Room Building (ヤマモトロックマシン（旧山本鉄工所）自治寮食堂・娯楽室棟) is a timber building of around 1937, with a canteen on the ground floor and a recreation room above, at the former company dormitories of a rock drill maker in Tojo-cho, Shobara City, Hiroshima Prefecture; it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 February 2016. It stands in the middle of the dormitory block, between the family building and the single employees' building. It is a 2-story timber structure with a partly single-story section, a tiled roof and a building area of 281 square meters.

The building has two parts. The 2-story main block, with its ridge running north to south, holds the dining hall and recreation room. A single-story wing running east to west is attached to it and contained the kitchen and the cooks' room. This is where residents gathered to eat every day and to unwind after a shift, and its position, squeezed between the two residential buildings, tells you exactly what it was for.

Why the Dining Hall and Recreation Room Building Was Registered

It was registered for contributing to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs values it for conveying what daily life in a prewar self-governing dormitory was like. If the family and single employees' buildings were the containers for private life, the canteen and recreation room were what made the dormitory work as a community. Only with all three standing together can the whole pattern of dormitory life be read.

The interior is the other reason. Both the dining hall and the recreation room are single undivided rooms, and their ceilings are lined with pressed-steel panels, sheets of metal pressed into shape in a die. It is an unusual finish for a wooden dormitory. An ironworks' canteen under a steel ceiling is a pairing that catches the eye.

According to the group preserving the dormitories, close to 400 people lived here at the peak and the dormitories were the center of the neighborhood. At the big clean-up in 2014, the local women's association served volunteers barley-rice curry, remembered as a dormitory specialty. What survives here is not only architecture but also that memory of shared meals.

What to Look For at the Dining Hall and Recreation Room Building

If you get inside, look up first. The ceiling is made of pressed steel panels laid edge to edge, and metal reflects light differently from plaster or boards. Watch how the pressed shapes of the panels and the lines of their joints read in the daylight from the windows.

Then take in the size of the rooms. The canteen and the recreation room are each a single undivided room, made for large numbers of people at once. During preservation events the upstairs recreation room has been used as a studio and gallery, so the wide floor and bright ceiling still bring people together.

From outside, notice how the single-story kitchen wing meets the 2-story main block at a right angle. Keeping the smoky, steamy kitchen in its own wing while leaving it only a few steps from the tables reflects the practical demands of feeding a large dormitory every day.

Visiting the Dining Hall and Recreation Room Building

The Yamamoto Rock Machine dormitory dining hall is on company land and is not open on a regular basis. You can see the exterior from the public road that runs along the dormitory block south of the factories; it sits in the middle of the row, between the family and single employees' buildings with their matching roofs.

The steel ceilings and the open rooms can be seen only during tours, exhibitions or workshops held by the preservation group or the company. Events do not follow a fixed annual schedule, so check before you go. Do not enter the grounds without permission, photograph from the road, and follow the organizers' instructions during events.