Former Kurosawa Junior High School Cooking Room and Library

Two Rooms, One Building

The Former Kurosawa Junior High School Cooking Room and Library (旧黒沢中学校調理室及び図書館, Kyū Kurosawa Chūgakkō Chōrishitsu oyobi Toshokan) is a single-storey timber block of 1951 in the Kamigo district of Daigo Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, added to the national list as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 19 December 2014.

It covers 141 square metres and stands directly behind the centre of the main school block. The southern half held the reading room, the northern half the cooking room. The registered title uses the word for a library building, while the official description calls the space a reading room; the two records differ slightly on that point.

Each room measures 5 bays by 4 bays and is left open, without internal partitions. One held bookshelves and the other sinks and worktops, yet the dimensions of the two are identical.

The Staggered Plan and the Stepped Ridge

The first thing to notice about the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Cooking Room and Library is that the roofline changes height partway along. At the boundary between the two rooms, the cooking room is set back from the line of the reading room, so the gabled sheet metal roof steps as well. It reads from outside as two boxes standing shoulder to shoulder, slightly out of line, rather than as the single building it is.

The official record does not explain the offset. It is fair to observe, though, that a cooking room dealing with fire, water and steam and a reading room wanting steady light without direct sun have different demands on their windows, and that setting one behind the other turns their openings towards different aspects.

King post trusses carry the roof, the same system used on the main block, spanning 4 bays without intermediate supports. The walls are lapped boarding, the floors are boarded, and the ceilings use thin battens holding flat panels. The finishes repeat those of the main building, which is what gives the campus its consistency.

Why It Was Registered

Registration number 08-0268 was issued under the criterion for buildings that set a standard of design, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the block as part of a single group with the main building.

After the School Education Law of 1947 made lower secondary education compulsory, cooking practicals in home economics and a proper reading room became requirements rather than luxuries. In a farming and forestry district of timber schoolhouses, this block went up the year after the main building. Facilities were not left until later.

The main building, the technology classroom, the indoor gymnasium and the music classroom were registered on the same date, leaving all five buildings of the campus on the list. Daigo Town points to the survival of the ancillary blocks at their original scale as the reason the group is worth keeping.

Visiting the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Cooking Room and Library

Teaching stopped here in 2013, and the whole campus has been municipal property without a public function ever since. The rooms cannot be entered, and no hours or fees have been set for the Former Kurosawa Junior High School Cooking Room and Library. Business that requires stepping onto the site should be cleared first with the Lifelong Learning Section of the Daigo Town Board of Education (telephone 0295-72-1148); taking photographs there counts as such business.

Hitachi-Daigo Station on the JR Suigun Line is about 10 kilometres to the south, roughly 20 minutes by car, with only sparse bus services. Since the block sits behind the main building, what shows from the road is a glimpse of the stepped roof over the ridge of the larger building. The address is 2600 Kamigo, Daigo Town, Kuji District, Ibaraki Prefecture, and adjacent lots. (Information checked September 2026.)