Heian Jogakuin Showakan

A steel-reinforced concrete school of the early Showa era

The Heian Jogakuin Showakan (平安女学院昭和館) is a steel-reinforced concrete school building completed in 1929 on Muromachi-dori in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on May 15, 2007.

It rises two storeys, with a partial third floor and a half-basement, over a footprint of 975 square metres. The plan is long and narrow, 18 metres wide and 55 metres deep, and the building occupies the northwest corner of the Heian Jogakuin lot, close to Muromachi-dori.

Each level had its own job. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the half-basement held an assembly hall, the ground floor the staff room, the first floor classrooms, and the top floor piano practice rooms. The hall sits partly below ground, with the staff room and classrooms stacked above it.

Why it was registered

Showakan was registered under the criterion of buildings that serve as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs presents it as an early Showa-era school built in steel-reinforced concrete.

Two designers shared the work. The school credits the architecture to J. V. W. Bergamini, an American missionary architect whose other buildings include St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and Holy Trinity Church in Kyoto, and the structure to Naito Tachu, the engineer known for his work on earthquake-resistant design who later engineered Tokyo Tower and Tsutenkaku in Osaka.

The school's first building, Meijikan of 1895, is load-bearing brick. Showakan, some 34 years younger, swapped brick for a concrete frame but kept brick-coloured tile on its upper storey, so the two read as members of the same campus.

What to look for

The walls change material between floors: rendered in mortar at ground level, clad in brick tile above. The pale base and the warm red-brown upper storey make the outline of the building easy to pick out.

The school points to two decorative touches that lighten an otherwise solid block: pointed arches and medallions, round reliefs bearing crests and emblems. The pointed arch comes from Gothic architecture, a natural choice for a school founded by the Episcopal Church, and it gives the Heian Jogakuin Showakan a quiet ecclesiastical note.

Visiting

The Heian Jogakuin Showakan is a working school building and is not open to the public. It is not on the list for the 2026 Kyoto Modern Architecture Festival.

The building stands at the northwest corner of the school lot near Muromachi-dori, but as it is inside the campus, little of it can be seen from outside. If you take photographs near the school gates, make sure students and staff are not in the frame.