Former Fourth Junior and Senior High School Main Building

A Red Brick Schoolhouse from 1891 in Central Kanazawa

Walk the tree-lined avenue that runs from Korinbo toward Kenrokuen Garden, and a two-story building of deep red brick comes into view on the green edge of Hirosaka. Lines of white brick and dark glazed brick run across its façade, breaking up the red and giving the long wall a quiet rhythm. This is the former main building of the Fourth Higher Middle School, finished in July 1891 after work began on the site in June 1889.

The school it was built for trained students of the Hokuriku region for entry to Tokyo's Imperial University, and was renamed the Fourth Higher School, known simply as "Shiko," in 1894. It closed in 1950 when Japan reorganized its school system, and its role passed to Kanazawa University. The building survived, and since 2008 it has held the Ishikawa Shiko Memorial Museum of Cultural Exchange, run by Ishikawa Prefecture. The structure itself remains the property of the national government.

The plan was simple and practical. Teachers' rooms and offices filled the first floor; classrooms occupied the second. What sets the building apart is not its size but the care taken with its brickwork and proportions, which is why it has drawn architects and historians for well over a century.

Why It Is an Important Cultural Property

The building was designated an Important Cultural Property on 12 March 1969. The reason lies partly in who designed it. The architects were Yamaguchi Hanroku and Kuru Masamichi, both attached to the accounting bureau of the Ministry of Education, where they handled the new higher schools that began with the First Higher School in Tokyo.

Yamaguchi had trained in France, at the École Centrale in Paris. That matters because most Western-style architecture in Meiji Japan followed British models, taught at the Imperial University. His French background shows in the restrained, clear handling of the wall surfaces, a calm and orderly composition rather than a showy one. Records held by Ishikawa Prefecture describe the building as among the oldest surviving works nationwide by a Japanese architect who received a full Western architectural education, rather than by one of the foreign experts hired in the early Meiji decades.

There is a near-twin in Kumamoto. The former main building of the Fifth Higher School, now the Goko Memorial Hall of Kumamoto University, was built to a closely related design and was designated an Important Cultural Property in the same year, 1969. Seeing the two as a pair makes clear how a single design idea was carried across the country through the ministry's small group of architects.

One detail of the school's origins is worth keeping in mind while you look at it. When the institution was founded in 1887, the former lords of the Kaga domain, the Maeda family, contributed a large share of the cost. The first director of the present museum was Maeda Toshiyasu, the eighteenth head of that family, a thread that ties the building back to the city's feudal past.

What to Look For

Start with the walls. The red brick is laid with precision, and against it the builders set lines of white brick and bands of dark brown glazed brick. Above the windows, brick arches curve in shallow, light forms. The point of all this was to keep a long brick wall from feeling flat, and it works: the surface changes as the light moves across it through the day.

Then look up. The roof is hipped and covered in pantiles, with ornaments along the ridge and metal snow-guard grilles fixed to the slopes, a practical answer to Kanazawa's heavy winter snowfall. Six brick chimney flues rise from the roof, spaced to add variation to the skyline rather than crowd it. The front entrance projects from the center of the long façade, anchoring the symmetry.

Inside, when the museum is open, the building is divided into two halves. The west side holds the Ishikawa Shiko Memorial Museum, free to enter, with displays on the old school, its students, and dormitory life. The east side holds the Ishikawa Museum of Modern Literature, a paid section devoted to writers connected with the prefecture, among them Izumi Kyoka, Tokuda Shusei, and Muro Saisei. The corridors and former classrooms keep their period feel, and a costume rental room and a small shop in the restored gatekeeper's lodge lean into the Meiji and Taisho atmosphere.

A practical note before you plan a visit. The facility has been closed since the Noto Peninsula earthquake of January 2024 while the historic building undergoes repair, and the costume room and shop have also been closed since the start of 2025. The exterior can still be appreciated from the surrounding park and the avenue. Check the official site for the current reopening situation before traveling.

Around the Building

The building sits on Hyakumangoku-dori, the broad avenue once called Hirosaka-dori, with the green of Ishikawa Shiko Memorial Park spreading behind it. This is one of the easiest spots in Kanazawa to fold into a wider day. The Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art is a short walk away, and Kenrokuen Garden and Kanazawa Castle Park lie just beyond, up the same gentle slope.

For getting here, the Korinbo bus stop is about a minute on foot, served by the Kanazawa Loop Bus, Hokutetsu local buses, and the Nishi-Nihon JR bus. The red brick exterior photographs well against the avenue's trees in any season, and even with the interior closed it remains an easy and rewarding stop on a walk through the cultural quarter.