Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School

A hillside campus by Murano Tōgo

Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School (甲南女子中学校・高等学校) in Morikitacho, Higashinada Ward, Kobe, is a private girls' secondary school whose campus was built in 1968 to designs by the architect Murano Tōgo (村野藤吾); eight of its buildings were registered in 2020 and 2022, each as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The eight are the administration building, the special classroom building, the gymnasium, the physical education office, the auditorium, the guardhouse at the main gate, the tea ceremony classroom and the west gate guardhouse. All but the tea ceremony classroom, finished in 1971, went up in 1968 for the school's move to this site. The six buildings registered first were built by the contractor Obayashi.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the administration building as the core of Murano's plan for the campus. The registrations follow that plan from its centre all the way out to the gates.

Flood, fire and a fresh start

Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School grew out of Konan Girls' High School (甲南高等女学校), founded in 1920. The school's own history records that the great Hanshin flood of 1938 buried its buildings in debris and that the air raids on Kobe in 1945 destroyed every one of them.

The move to Morikitacho came in 1968, and most of the registered buildings date from that move. Konan Women's University, run by the same school corporation, occupies the neighbouring campus to the west; three of its buildings, its administration building, Building No. 3 and a connecting corridor, were registered separately in 2019.

On the secondary school campus a new teaching building was begun in 2011 and completed in January 2012, the year the special classroom building was also renovated. Murano's buildings now stand alongside the newer ones.

Laid out around the administration building

The Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School campus is organised around the administration building at its centre. A driveway passes through the open ground floor, raised on pilotis, with the main entrance on its east side. The 4-storey special classroom building joins it to the east, reached by a covered walkway that keeps staff and student routes apart.

North of the administration building's west end stands the gymnasium, with the small physical education office attached at its southwest corner. The hexagonal auditorium sits on the slope to the south, and further south the guardhouse stands beside the main gate. A second guardhouse stands by the west gate to the northwest, and the timber tea ceremony classroom occupies the eastern corner of the grounds.

Run down the list from the 1,703 m² administration building to the 11 m² west gate guardhouse and the same hand is at work at every scale.

Eight registered buildings

Six buildings were registered on April 3, 2020 (numbers 28-0731 to 28-0736): the administration building, special classroom building, gymnasium, physical education office, auditorium and guardhouse. The tea ceremony classroom and west gate guardhouse followed on June 29, 2022 (numbers 28-0778 and 28-0779).

The auditorium, tea ceremony classroom and west gate guardhouse were registered as models of design; the other five for their contribution to the historic landscape. Between them they cover reinforced concrete, steel frame, timber, and concrete block combined with timber or light roofs, a cross-section of Murano's school work from this period on a single site.

Visiting

Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School is a working school, and its buildings are not open to the public. Visitors cannot enter the grounds or the buildings, and no public open days were advertised as of October 2026; anyone hoping to visit should contact the school directly.

From outside, the buildings you can locate are the guardhouse beside the main gate on the south and the west gate guardhouse on the northwest. Students and cars come and go through both gates, so if you stop to take a photograph, stay out of the way and keep students out of the frame.

Getting there

The school gives the walk as about 10 minutes north from JR Kōnan-Yamate Station on the JR Kobe Line, or about 15 minutes northwest from Ashiyagawa Station on the Hankyu Kobe Line. By Kobe city bus, get off at the JR Kōnan-Yamate stop and walk about 10 minutes north.

The school's postal address is 5-6-1 Morikitacho, which differs from the lot number 5-4-1 given in the cultural property register.