Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom

The Last Building on the Campus

The Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom (旧黒沢中学校音楽教室, Kyū Kurosawa Chūgakkō Ongaku Kyōshitsu) is a single-storey timber classroom of 1962 in the Kamigo district of Daigo Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, added to the national list as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 19 December 2014.

At 92 square metres it is the smallest of the five registered buildings, and the latest. It stands on higher ground at the southern edge of the site, its ridge running east to west under a gabled roof of pantiles.

The way it meets the main block is the detail to hold on to. This single-storey building connects by a bridging corridor to the second floor of the main building's southern end. The ground rises towards the south, so following the contour put the floor level of the music room in line with the upper storey next door.

Twelve Years Later, and Still in Keeping

Kurosawa Junior High School opened in 1947 and the main block went up in 1950. The technology classroom and the cooking room and library followed in 1951, the indoor gymnasium in 1955, and the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom only in 1962, a gap of 12 years from the main building.

None of that shows. The walls are lapped boarding, the roof frame is trussed, the tiles are pantiles: the vocabulary of the main block, repeated without deviation. By the early 1960s reinforced concrete school buildings were going up across Japan, so building in timber here, and matching the existing finishes, was a decision rather than a default.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes this building as forming the front of the whole complex together with the main block. Placed on the rise at the southern end, it closes the long line of classrooms. The last building to arrive is the one that finished the composition.

One Room, Tall Openings

Inside is a single undivided room. Supplementary posts stand alongside the main posts and diagonal braces carry the purlins, a way of stiffening the frame that allows large openings in the walls. The official description notes that these openings are wide, and tall as well.

Rooms for singing and ensemble playing need more height and more air than a room full of desks. It is tempting to read the tall openings as a response to that, and the proportions are consistent with it, though the record does not draw the connection. Standing outside, compare the window heads here with those on the main block next door.

Registration came under the criterion for buildings contributing to the historical landscape of the country. Where the main block and the technology classroom were listed as setting a standard of design, the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom shares its criterion with the gymnasium. What counted was less the building on its own than the shape it gives the site.

Visiting the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom

More than 10 years after the last lesson, the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Music Classroom remains under municipal management and outside any public programme. There is no way in, and no calendar of open days or prices. Setting foot on the campus means squaring it beforehand with the Lifelong Learning Section of the Daigo Town Board of Education (0295-72-1148), who can also say what photography is allowed.

Hitachi-Daigo Station on the JR Suigun Line is about 10 kilometres to the south, roughly 20 minutes by car, with limited bus services. The address is 2661-1 Kamigo, Daigo Town, Kuji District, Ibaraki Prefecture, and adjacent lots, a different lot number from the other four buildings. Because it sits high on the southern side of the site, this is the first of the five buildings you see when approaching from the south. (Information checked September 2026.)