Umezu Hall (former Ota Town Hall)

A Town Hall Paid For by One Man

Umezu Kaikan (梅津会館), the former Ota Town Hall, stands at 2186 Nishinicho in Hitachiota City, Ibaraki Prefecture, was completed in 1936, and was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 23 August 1999.

The building announces itself from the corner. A square tower rises at the southeast angle, and a deep porte-cochere with a single wide arch projects from the east front, the side that faces the street. Reinforced concrete, two storeys, a tower on top, a footprint of 232 square metres. For a town of this size in the mid 1930s, that was a statement.

The money came from Umezu Fukujiro, born locally, who made his fortune in the marine produce trade and gave it back to the place he came from. His name went on the building. A bust of him stands beside it. The following year he funded a prefectural training institute as well, now the Nishiyama Training Centre.

Why It Was Registered

The property carries registration number 08-0013 and was listed under the criterion covering buildings that serve as a model of design. The registration notice was published on 7 September 1999.

Registration as a Tangible Cultural Property is a lighter category than designation as an Important Cultural Property. It applies mainly to buildings roughly fifty years old or more, and it obliges the owner to notify the authorities before altering the exterior rather than freezing the structure entirely. The system was created in 1996 specifically to catch modern buildings like this one, which were disappearing faster than the designation process could handle.

What earns Umezu Kaikan its place is the handling of surface. The main walls are faced in scratch-textured tile, a finish that was fashionable in Japanese public architecture of the late 1920s and 1930s and that gives the mass a slightly rough, absorbent quality in raking light. Terracotta is used at points where the eye stops: the keystone of the entrance arch, and other accents. The combination of scratch tile below and terracotta at the joints is characteristic of its decade, and Hitachiota has a well-preserved example of it on a public building rather than a bank or a department store.

Inside, the material to look for is kansuiseki, a white marble also used on the central staircase of the National Diet Building in Tokyo. It survives at the reception counter, in the wall panelling and in the newel post of the stair to the first floor.

Three Lives, and How to See It

The building served as Ota Town Hall and then as Hitachiota City Hall until 1978, when the municipal offices moved. Conversion followed, and in 1980 it opened as the Hitachiota City Museum of Local History. That conversion involved installing large display cases and covering original surfaces.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 the city began a programme of seismic strengthening combined with restoration back to the 1936 condition, supported by an Agency for Cultural Affairs subsidy for regional revitalisation through cultural properties. The building reopened on 22 November 2014. The display cases came out; the original counters and panelling came back. Visitors are effectively seeing the third version of the interior, and the closest of the three to what Umezu paid for.

The ground floor, once the windows of the citizens' affairs and cashier sections, now holds the permanent and special exhibition rooms and the reception desk. Holdings include folding screens by the locally born painter Usami Taiki, archaeological material excavated from the Hatayama and Zuiryu tumulus groups, and farming and fishing implements collected across the district. The first floor keeps a Showa-era atmosphere and is used flexibly for exhibitions and events.

Admission is free. Opening hours run from 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30, and the museum closes on Mondays, on the following day when a Monday is a public holiday, and from 28 December to 4 January. Occasional temporary closures occur, so a check before travelling is sensible.

From JR Hitachiota Station the walk takes about 20 minutes, or roughly 10 minutes by bus. Drivers need about 15 minutes from the Hitachi-Minami-Ota interchange on the Joban Expressway and about 25 minutes from the Naka interchange. A car park sits opposite, signposted under the Umezu Kaikan name rather than the museum name, which catches out first-time visitors. A separate annex museum in a nearby storehouse building opened in 1995 and holds further local material.