A wooden post office on the road below Mount Tsukuba
The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office (旧常陸北条郵便局) is a wooden former post-office building of 1933 in the Hojo district of Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 17 November 2015. It counts as 1 structure.
The building faces the road that runs along the southern foot of Mount Tsukuba, on a plot that is narrow at the street and long towards the rear. The roof is Kirizuma-zukuri, gabled, and the building is Tsumairi, presenting its gable end to the road rather than its long side. A small gabled porch projects at the centre of that end, and the board within its gable carries a geometric pattern. The outer walls are Shitami-itabari, horizontal weatherboarding, set with glazed windows. The structure is wood-framed and 2 storeys high, roofed in tile, with a building area of 115 square meters.
The plan changes character from front to back. The front of the ground floor was the post office proper; behind it, and on the upper floor, the layout follows that of a Japanese house. The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office preserves the arrangement of a prewar provincial branch, where the counter and the postmaster's home shared one roof.
What the register recognised
The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office carries registration number 08-0278, and the criterion applied to it is the one for buildings that contribute to the historic character of the landscape. The assessment turned on the part the building plays in the street it belongs to, rather than on the refinement of the building taken alone.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a good example of a small provincial post office with a Western-looking exterior. There is no brick or stone here of the kind a metropolitan head office would have used. The carpenters worked in the local timber tradition, with weatherboard over a wooden frame, and reserved the Western manner for the street front alone. That was the practical answer a country branch could afford, and it survives here intact.
Hojo grew up as the starting point of the Tsukuba-michi, the pilgrimage road to the shrine on Mount Tsukuba, and became the commercial centre for the villages around its foot. The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office was registered as one of the buildings that line that road. Several of Tsukuba City's registered properties stand in the same district, and this one sits among them.
The porch, and the plan that runs back from it
Stop in front of the porch before anything else. Under the triangular gable that faces the road, a second and smaller gabled porch is attached, and the panel set into it is worked in a geometric design built from straight lines and angles with no curve anywhere. The decorative taste of the 1920s and early 1930s has been compressed into a few square meters of timber.
The weatherboarding around it is laid in overlapping horizontal boards, and each overlap throws a thin shadow at regular intervals. The straight-edged ornament of the porch playing against that horizontal repetition is what gives the front of the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office its particular look.
The plot is narrow where it meets the road and runs a long way back, the shape shared by the merchant houses of Hojo and close to the way a Machiya frontage is divided. Only part of the building is visible from the street.
The front of the ground floor held the counters. Behind it, and upstairs, the fittings are those of a Japanese house. A Western face wrapped around Japanese domestic rooms is not something you can read from the pavement, so anyone who gets inside should watch how the floor levels and the ceilings change on the way back through the building.
After the counters closed
The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office was built as a branch office in 1933. Postal service in Hojo goes back further than that, but the fabric standing today dates from that year.
The branch is understood to have left the building in 1962, after which it stayed in use as a dwelling. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records alterations in the middle of the Showa period and again in 2008.
Those 2008 works brought the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office back into daily public use as a café. People now sit where the counters stood, and the earlier plan has been kept rather than opened out. Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Property system is built on the idea that an owner protects a building by continuing to use it, and this is close to a textbook case.
Hojo has taken two hard blows in recent years, from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and from a tornado the following year. A number of buildings along the road were lost. That the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office came through both, and was registered in 2015, places the registration within the wider effort to hold the streetscape together after the damage.
Visiting and access
The Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office faces the road, so the exterior can be seen at any time. The porch and the weatherboarded wall are easier to take in whole from the far side of the street. Photographing the outside is unrestricted, but the building is a working business in private ownership, so entering the plot is only possible during business hours.
Seeing the interior means going in as a customer of the café that occupies it. As of September 2026 it opens from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and closes on Tuesdays, with occasional additional closures, so check before making the trip. Photography indoors calls for discretion towards other customers and a word with the staff.
By public transport, take the Oda Shuttle of Tsukuba City's community bus service, the Tsuku-bus, from the Tsukuba Center terminal next to Tsukuba Station on the Tsukuba Express. The ride to the Hojo Nakamachi stop takes roughly 50 to 60 minutes, and the building is a few minutes' walk from there. Departures are infrequent, so consult the timetable before setting out.
By car the trip from Tsukuba Station takes about 20 minutes. Enquiries about the property go to the Cultural Properties Division of the Tsukuba City Board of Education, on 029-883-1111.
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Q&A
- Can the interior of the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office be visited?
- There is no general opening as a cultural property. The building now houses a café, and visitors go inside as customers of that business. The exterior can be seen from the road at any time.
- What are the opening hours and closing day at the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office?
- As of September 2026 the business inside opens from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and closes on Tuesdays. Additional closures happen, so confirm before travelling.
- How do I get to the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office from Tsukuba Station?
- Take the Tsuku-bus Oda Shuttle from Tsukuba Center, next to Tsukuba Station on the Tsukuba Express, and get off at Hojo Nakamachi, a few minutes' walk away. The ride takes roughly 50 to 60 minutes. By car it is about 20 minutes from the station.
- When was the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office built, and when did it stop serving as a post office?
- It was built in 1933. The branch is understood to have moved out in 1962, and the building was altered in 2008 before taking on its present use.
- What should I look for at the Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office?
- Start with the geometric panel in the gabled porch and the horizontal weatherboarding of the walls. The way the plan shifts from a public counter at the front of the ground floor to Japanese domestic rooms behind it and upstairs is the other thing that defines the building.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office |
|---|---|
| Location | 183-3 Nakamachiura, Hojo, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure) |
| Year Designated | Registered 2015 (Heisei 27) |
| Quantity | 1 structure |
| Dimensions | Wood-framed, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 115 square meters |
| Owner | Privately owned |
| Public Access | Exterior viewable at all times; interior only during the occupying business's opening hours |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database: Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00010743
- Cultural Heritage Online: Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/236358
- Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education, Cultural Properties of Ibaraki: Former Hitachi Hojo Post Office
- https://kyoiku.pref.ibaraki.jp/bunkazai/bunkazai-registered-5969/
- Tsukuba City: Protection of Cultural Properties (list of registered tangible cultural properties)
- https://www.city.tsukuba.lg.jp/kankobunka/bunka/rekishi/1001638.html
- Tsukuba City: Guide to the Tsuku-bus community bus service
- https://www.city.tsukuba.lg.jp/soshikikarasagasu/toshikeikakubusogokotsuseisakuka/gyomuannai/2/1/1001471.html
Last verified: 2026.09.08