Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1

What Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 Is

Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 is a single-storey wooden schoolhouse of 1910 at Uwaoka in Daigo Town, Kuji District, Ibaraki Prefecture, and it became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. The roof is hipped (Yosemune-zukuri) and clad in sheet metal, the building area is 373 square meters, and the long elevation faces south across the schoolyard.

The school is older than the building. A school opened at Uwaoka in 1879 with 51 pupils and became independent as Uwaoka Ordinary Elementary School in 1892. The grounds were moved to the present site in 1911, and this classroom block dates from around that move. Both the Agency for Cultural Affairs database and Daigo Town give 1910 as the year of construction.

The site fronts National Route 461, with the Oshikawa River running east to west just below it. This is a pocket of relatively flat ground between the Yamizo hills to the north and the Torinoko hills to the south, in a town that is otherwise steep. The schoolyard occupies the lower, southern part of the plot; the classroom blocks sit on the raised ground behind it.

Enrolment peaked at 278 pupils in 1960, then fell away, and the school closed in March 2001. Since then a local group, the Uwaoka School Site Preservation Association, has looked after Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 and the other blocks.

A Meiji Design Standard, Built in Timber

The plan of Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 is what Japanese architectural historians call a north-corridor type. The circulation runs along the north wall, and 4 classrooms open off it, 2 to the east and 2 to the west of the entrance hall. That arrangement frees the entire south wall of every classroom for windows, so daylight reaches the desks morning and afternoon.

In 1895 the Ministry of Education issued a set of explanatory drawings and design guidance for school buildings that shaped how schools were laid out across the country for decades afterwards. Daigo Town notes that the Uwaoka blocks follow that guidance closely in their planning and in the way they handle daylight. A small school deep in the hills was being built to a national template.

The walls are finished in sasarago shitami, a horizontal weatherboarding (Shitami-itabari) held by vertical battens that are notched to fit the stepped profile of the boards. It is a fussier detail than plain boarding. The roof frame is a Japanese-style truss (Wagoya) with a single tier of widely spaced rafters (Taruki). A gabled (Kirizuma-zukuri) porch projects at the centre of the south front, and shoe-changing entrances were provided at each end.

Repairs were carried out in 1926 and again in 1968. The sheet-metal roof covering is not original, but the footprint and the plan of Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 remain substantially as built.

Why It Was Registered

Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 was entered in the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 19 December 2014 under registration number 08-0263. The criterion applied was that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. Registration is a lighter instrument than designation, and the distinction is set out under Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

Few Meiji-period elementary school buildings survive in Ibaraki Prefecture. The older one, the main block of the former Mitsukaido Elementary School of 1881, is a prefecturally designated property, but it was dismantled and re-erected at the Ibaraki Prefectural Museum of History in Mito. Daigo Town describes Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 as the oldest school building in the prefecture still standing where it was built.

Buildings 2 and 3 on the same grounds were registered on the same day, so the 3 blocks are treated as one group. The Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education points to the way the blocks are stepped across the sloping ground around the Meiji-period block, and to the part they play in the landscape of this farming valley.

What to Look For at Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1

Face the building from the schoolyard and the composition is easy to read: a long hipped roof broken at its centre by the gable of the porch, with boarded walls running out to either side. There is almost no carved ornament anywhere on it.

Look up under the eaves. The rafters are in one tier and set well apart, nothing like the layered brackets of a temple. The vertical battens of the weatherboarding give the wall its only regular rhythm, and they are easiest to read in raking afternoon light.

Inside, each classroom is entered from the north corridor. The window sashes are wooden, and Daigo Town says the interiors can be seen much as they were left when the school closed.

West of Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1 stands a science room of 1992, with a library block of 1952 to its south, and a storehouse of 1910 sits on the east side of the schoolyard. All 3 have been altered too heavily to be included in the registration, but together they show how the grounds were patched and extended over a century of use.

Visiting Former Uwaoka Elementary School Building 1

The buildings open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free and visitors may go inside. They are shut on weekdays, though Daigo Town opens them daily through the summer holiday period and during November, when the surrounding hills turn. Filming can close the site at short notice, so anyone travelling a long way should check first.

By car, the drive takes about 65 minutes from the Naka interchange on the Joban Expressway via National Route 118, or about 75 minutes from the Yaita interchange on the Tohoku Expressway via Routes 4, 293 and 118. A dedicated car park adjoins the schoolyard. By rail the nearest station is Hitachi-Daigo on the JR Suigun Line, from which the prefecture's official tourism site gives a bus ride of 5 minutes.

School parties and other groups must send an application form to Daigo Town in advance. Enquiries go to the town's Tourism and Commerce Division on 0295-72-1138. Visitor information gives the address as 957-3 Uwaoka, which differs from the registered address of 914 and other lots.

Commercial filming is handled through a separate procedure for production companies. The town's guidance does not state a policy on personal photography, and since the buildings are still used as a location, the safest course is to follow the notices posted on the day.