Former Okagata Club (Komonoya Hall)

A 1927 Clubhouse in the Old Port Town of Hyogo

The Former Okagata Club (Komonoya Hall) (旧岡方倶楽部（小物屋会館）) is a three-storey reinforced concrete clubhouse built in 1927 in Honmachi, Hyogo Ward, Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, which in 2018 was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as the meeting hall of a neighbourhood association in the old town of Hyogo-no-tsu, standing in the middle of its plot and facing east. It covers 180 square metres under a flat roof and belongs to Kobe City.

It was registered as a building that has become a model of design, and the Agency notes that it carries the architectural features of Western-style buildings of the early Showa years.

On the Site of the Okagata Town Hall

Hyogo Ward's local history says that in the Edo period the townsmen's quarters of Hyogo were divided into three districts, Okagata, Kitahama and Minamihama, with Okagata the name for the streets not facing the shore. The Former Okagata Club stands on the site of the Okagata district hall.

According to a lecture notice from the Hyogo Prefectural Hyogo-no-tsu Museum, the clubhouse was built by local residents, led by Hyogo merchants, to a design by Takamatsu Kichisaburo. It came through wartime bombing and a major earthquake, and survives as a record of modern Hyogo-no-tsu.

Kobe City turned the building into part of the new Kobe City Historical Archives, which opened on 1 June 2026. Beside a newly built main block, the Former Okagata Club now serves as an annex with exhibition rooms.

What to Look For

The Agency notes that only the front is dressed: the ground floor finished to look like stone, and the floors above to look like tile. From the street, a fine tiled wall rises above a heavier stone-like base.

The wall above the entrance porch and the top of the building step slightly forward, just enough to mark the centre of the facade. Trace the line upward from the porch to the parapet to see it.

Visiting the Former Okagata Club

Kobe City says visitors may freely view exhibition rooms 1 and 2 on the second floor and room 3 on the third floor of the annex, the Former Okagata Club, with permanent displays on Kobe's history, including one on the clubhouse itself. Photography is allowed without flash.

Opening hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It closes on Saturdays, Sundays, public and substitute holidays and from 29 December to 3 January, with occasional special openings listed in the archives calendar. The archives give the address as 2-3-33 Honmachi; the Agency lists 2-3-46 Honmachi. It is about 7 minutes on foot northwest of Chuoichiba-mae Station on the Kobe Municipal Subway Kaigan Line. Telephone 078-335-6760.