Kasama City Museum of History and Folklore (former Shishido Town Office)

A 1937 Town Hall Turned Local Museum

The Kasama City Museum of History and Folklore (former Shishido Town Office) (笠間市立歴史民俗資料館（旧宍戸町役場庁舎）) is a former town hall built in 1937 in Tairamachi, Kasama City, Ibaraki Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on February 17, 2004. Kasama City owns it.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a two-storey wooden building with a partly single-storey section, roofed partly in tile and partly in sheet metal, with a building area of 250 square metres; its registration number is 08-0114, and at registration it was named the Tomobe Town Museum of History and Folklore. According to Kasama City, it stands in front of Shishido Elementary School and served as the Tomobe town office until 1958.

Why It Was Registered

The former Shishido Town Office was registered as a model of architectural form. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes an L-shaped, two-storey town hall with a hipped roof and clapboard walls, a carriage porch on the east side, a single-storey archive of Ōya stone stone projecting to the north, and a storeroom at the back to the west.

The main block follows the standard plan of the time, with a service counter and offices on the ground floor and the council chamber upstairs; what sets it apart is the unusually wide carriage porch (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The building preserves the look of an early Showa town hall almost unchanged.

What to Look For

Start with the carriage porch on the east side, the wide entrance the Agency singles out. The clapboard walls and hipped roof give the building the quiet character of a timber town hall.

Walk round to the north to see the single-storey archive built of Oya stone, projecting from the wooden main block. Inside, the second floor was once the council chamber.

According to Kasama City, the museum displays finds from archaeological sites in the Tomobe area along with materials tracing changes in local industry, transport, education and daily life.

Visiting the Former Shishido Town Office

The former Shishido Town Office is open as a history and folklore museum. According to Kasama City, it opens on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays: 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. It closes over the New Year (December 28 to January 4), admission is free, and there is parking for 4 cars.

It is about a 10-minute walk from Shishido Station on the JR Mito Line, or about 2 minutes by car from the Tomobe Interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway. Enquiries: 0296-77-8925. Ask at the museum about photography.