Former Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Junior High School Main Building

A Meiji schoolhouse still standing on its original ground

The Former Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Junior High School Main Building (旧茨城県立土浦中学校本館) is a wooden school building completed in 1904 at Manabe in Tsuchiura City, Ibaraki Prefecture, and designated an Important Cultural Property in 1976.

The school it was built for is still there. It began in 1897 as the Tsuchiura branch of the prefectural middle school, became an independent institution named Tsuchiura Middle School in 1900, and now operates as Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Daiichi High School. The classroom block went up on the Manabe plateau north of the old castle town and was finished in December 1904. Students and staff call it simply the old main building.

Under the prewar system, a middle school took boys of about twelve for a five-year course. It was not compulsory schooling, and a prefecture built few of them, which is part of why the surviving examples matter.

Start with the plan. A long front range runs east to west, and at each end a wing folds back toward the rear, producing a shallow U. Japanese descriptions use the character 凹 for the shape, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes the two wings as bending backward. The composition is symmetrical about the central entrance. The building is single storey, timber framed, roofed in slate, with a building area of 987.9 square meters.

A Munafuda, the wooden tablet placed at a building's ridge-raising ceremony, was found in the ceiling void above the front porch. One face names the prefectural engineer who acted as master builder, the other names the year 1904 and the contractor Ishii Gonzo. That single tablet is included in the designation as an attached item, the category Japanese practice calls Tsuketari.

Why the Former Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Junior High School Main Building was designated

The designation as an Important Cultural Property was made on 3 February 1976. It was the first time a classroom building from an old-system middle school anywhere in Japan received national designation, and that precedence is the reason the building is cited in surveys of Meiji school architecture.

The designer was Komagine Kinji, an engineer employed by Ibaraki Prefecture. He was born in Shinjo in Yamagata Prefecture, graduated from the architecture department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1902, and was recruited by the prefecture on graduation. Tsuchiura City records him as a pupil of Tatsuno Kingo and gives his age as 26 when this building was drawn. Two other works of his survive in the prefecture: the auditorium of the former Ota Middle School in Hitachiota, and the entrance of the old main building of the Mito commercial school.

What Komagine produced was unusual for its date. Most Meiji school buildings were put up quickly and plainly, because the country needed a great many of them at once. This one is organised on classical lines, with a symmetrical plan and a deliberately formal front, and dressed in vertical Gothic detail. Tsuchiura City frames the result as a Western drawing built by Japanese carpentry, and the description fits: the profile is European, the joinery and framing behind it are the traditional timber craft of the region.

The prefectural board of education points out one departure from the symmetry. The corridor runs along the west side of the classrooms rather than being mirrored on both sides, so the plan is not in fact balanced. That followed the school-building convention of the period, which put the corridor where it would block the low afternoon sun from the west and keep it off the desks.

Seismic strengthening was completed in March 2018, in time for the school's 120th anniversary programme. The work was structural rather than cosmetic, and the exterior a visitor sees today is the repaired original rather than a reconstruction.

What to look for at the Former Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Junior High School Main Building

The entrance carries the design. A slender spire rises above the porch, and three arches open beneath it. Gabled pediments sit over the entrance and at both ends of the front range, and the roof slopes on either side carry three dormer windows each. Tall narrow windows run in an unbroken rhythm along the wall below. Every one of these elements pushes the eye upward, which is how a single-storey building 987.9 square meters in area manages to read as tall.

The wall surface

The outer walls are clad in German lap siding, a variety of Shitami-itabari in which each board is rebated so the face of the wall finishes almost flush instead of stepping out at every lap. The effect is a smoother, more masonry-like surface than ordinary weatherboarding, which suits the classical intent of the front. The paintwork is a pale cherry pink with dark brown to the trim, a combination that photographs oddly and looks entirely right in person on an overcast day.

Acanthus

Acanthus leaf ornament appears at intervals inside and out, enough that the alumni association has adopted the plant as the emblem of the building and titles its newsletter after it. Looking for the motif is a good way to work through the interior when the interior can be seen: it turns up on capitals, on brackets and in the plasterwork.

Windows and the light

The perimeter windows are sliding sash of the Japanese type rather than the casements a European building of this look would use, and they are treated identically whether they light a classroom or a corridor. Uniform elevation mattered more than honest expression of what lay behind it. Some of the large panes are old drawn glass, which ripples the view of the grounds slightly when you move your head. If you can stand inside on a bright day, the high ceilings and the depth of the window reveals do most of the work.

Visiting the Former Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura Junior High School Main Building

The building stands inside a working high school, which governs everything about access. It is at 2390-2 Manabe-cho, Tsuchiura City, roughly 2 kilometres north of JR Tsuchiura Station on the Joban Line, about a 25 minute walk. Kanto Railway buses serve a stop at the school itself, and the local bus network between Tsukuba and Tsuchiura passes close by.

Interior opening has been suspended. Part of the plaster ceiling in a corridor came down, and the alumni committee that runs the openings stopped admitting visitors inside on safety grounds; as of August 2026 the suspension was still in force, with reopening promised once repairs are finished and the building is confirmed safe. Before that, the interior was opened on the second Saturday of each month.

Viewing the exterior is still possible. Visitors are asked to call at the school office first rather than walking onto the grounds unannounced, and to keep away from the areas closed off. The school telephone number is 029-822-0137, and it is worth ringing ahead, since term-time events and examinations can make a given day impossible.

There is no admission charge. Photography of the exterior from the grounds is not restricted in the way interior exhibits usually are, but ask at the office, and avoid photographing students. For current opening news the school's own pages and those of the Shinshu alumni association carry the announcements; the city's cultural properties division directs enquiries straight to the school.