Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2

An extension added at the western end

Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2 (旧初原小学校二号棟, Kyu-Hatsubara Shogakko Nigoto) is a 2-storey timber classroom block of 1960 at Hatsubara in Daigo Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 10 May 2018. It has a metal-sheet roof and covers 100 square meters, and it was built onto the west end of the existing Building No. 1.

That figure of 100 square meters tells the story once you set it beside the 369 square meters of its neighbour. One classroom on the ground floor, one above it. Nothing more. When the roll grew, the school added what it needed to the end of the block it already had, and the makeshift logic of that decision is still legible in the plan.

Hatsubara Elementary School became an independent municipal school under Daigo Town in April 1956, and this extension followed 4 years later. The institution itself goes back to October 1873, and for long stretches of its life it operated as a branch of the school at Sawara. Consolidation closed it in March 1995, and the Hatsubara district community has looked after the site and its buildings ever since.

The grounds back onto a slope that drops away southward. Along the north side stand Building No. 1, then Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2 to its west, a detached kitchen block, and the auditorium of 1954, all joined by covered walkways. Building No. 2 sits at the hinge of that arrangement, meeting Building No. 1 on its east side while a walkway runs northwest from it to the auditorium.

The value of what was never altered

The listing criterion is the same one applied across this group: the building constitutes a model of design. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs adds in the case of Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2 is a separate observation, that alterations have been minimal and the building retains its original condition well.

Timber schools went up all over postwar Japan, and most have since lost their first appearance to seismic retrofitting and interior renewal. Wooden window frames give way to aluminium, ceilings are boarded over, classrooms are re-partitioned. Very little of that reached Building No. 2. It closed in 1995 and passed into community care without a major refit, so the fabric a visitor sees is largely the fabric of 1960.

Registration took effect on 10 May 2018 under number 08-306. Building No. 1 of 1942 and the auditorium of 1954 were listed the same day. The 3 buildings span 18 years of construction, which means one yard holds a schoolhouse from the war, one from the years of reconstruction, and one from the threshold of the high-growth decades.

What to look for

Start with the south elevation. The transoms above the windows are noticeably deeper than those on Building No. 1 next door, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that daylighting was given even more attention here than in the earlier block. A building put up 18 years later looked at its neighbour and pushed the same idea one step further. Seen back to back, the difference registers within a minute.

More glass means less wall, and less wall means less resistance to lateral force. The answer here was to strengthen the frame with supplementary posts and knee braces. A supplementary post is a second member set hard against a column to make up its section; a knee brace is a short diagonal across the inside corner where post meets beam, holding that corner from racking. The wish for a bright classroom and the obligation to stand up as a 2-storey timber structure meet in those two pieces of wood.

Go upstairs if the chance comes. The upper floor of a timber school feels different underfoot and reads differently in light. The windows sit at the same height relative to the floor, but the eye is further from the ground, so the valley opening to the south and the ridgeline pressing in behind both enter the frame. A floor containing a single classroom is not a space many people have stood in.

Step outside and look along the row. Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2 is the only one of the 3 that rises to a second storey. Its roof is metal sheet like its neighbour's, while the auditorium is tiled and rendered in mortar. Neither roof material nor storey height matches across the site. This was never one design; it is a school assembled in stages, and the roofline says so.

The place is not standing empty. Daigo Town records that residents put the former school buildings to use for activities such as festival drum practice, and 30 years on, the joinery and floors are still serviceable because hands have kept working on them.

Before you go

Former Hatsubara Elementary School Building No. 2 is not operated as a visitor facility. Since the school closed, the Hatsubara district community has managed and used the buildings, so no opening hours or admission charge have been published. To see the interior or to photograph it, contact the Lifelong Learning Section of the Daigo Town Board of Education on 0295-72-1148 in advance. Local events can take over the site on a given day.

From outside the fence the whole east-west row is visible at once. The upper floor of Building No. 2 rises clear of its neighbour, and stepping back a little makes the composition easier to read. The playground faces south, so the glazed south wall catches the light in the morning.

Hitachi-Daigo on the JR Suigun Line is the closest station, some 7 kilometers off to the southeast and about 15 minutes by road. Almost nothing runs along that stretch, so plan on a taxi from the rank or a hire car. Daigo Town puts the journey from Shinagawa, Tokyo or Ueno at 2 hours 20 minutes to 2 hours 50 minutes by JR, or roughly 1 hour by road heading north on National Route 118 from the Naka interchange of the Joban Expressway.