Former Ichishi Haze Post Office

A Post Office of 1931, Registered in 2019

The Former Ichishi Haze Post Office (旧一志波瀬郵便局, Kyu Ichishi Haze Yubinkyoku) is a single-storey timber building of 1931 at 2210-1 Wakazono, Haze, Ichishi-cho, Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, entered on the national register of tangible cultural properties on 10 September 2019. The quantity is one building: timber, single storey, tiled roof, with a footprint of 84 square metres.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes its position and layout. It is a former post office at the centre of a settlement on the middle reaches of the Haze River, a single-storey building with a hipped roof of pantiles, facing east onto the road. A gabled porch stands at the south of the front, and tall narrow windows are cut into weatherboarded walls finished in paint. Inside, an L-shaped plan places the working space to the east and the night duty room and similar rooms to the west. It is valuable for understanding the character of a rural post office building.

The register number is 24-0267, and the criterion applied is that the building contributes to the historic landscape of the country. Registration is a separate mechanism from designation: it works by notification and leaves the owner wide freedom to keep using the building. That framework is why this one now operates as a café.

An L-Shaped Plan Dividing Work from Living

The most concrete part of the Agency's account is the interior: an L-shaped plan with the working space east and the night duty room and similar rooms west.

The east faces the road and held the counter and the office work. The west lies at the back and housed the rooms where staff lived. The place of business and the place of living are divided east and west across the plan.

That there is a night duty room shows the post office worked around the clock. Telegrams and similar business had to be answered at night. The building was a workplace and a dwelling at once, and the running of it survives in the plan.

The L shape follows from fitting those two functions into one building. A simple rectangle would not have marked the difference between the road frontage and the rooms behind.

Painted Weatherboard and Tall Windows

The exterior is marked by weatherboarded walls finished in paint and by tall narrow windows.

Weatherboarding, laying horizontal boards in overlapping courses, is a Western technique, and finishing it in paint was used on Meiji-period government and school buildings. The tall narrow windows belong to the same manner. A rural post office of the early Showa years carrying Western technique is what places this building.

The roof, hipped and laid in pantiles, is Japanese, with a gabled porch at the south of the front. Roof in the Japanese manner, walls and windows in the Western: the two are combined.

The footprint of 84 square metres is small. What a village post office needed is what the building is.

After It Closed

The post office ceased trading in 1972. The building was kept locally, and around 2017 it was repaired and reopened as a café.

The register for tangible cultural properties assumes that an owner will maintain a building by using it. Forty-seven years passed between closure and registration, and the use changed before the entry was made. Continued use is what kept the building standing.

A round postbox stands in front of the building, a survival from its years as a post office, though it is not part of the registration.

Visiting

The building operates as a café. There is no admission charge and no general opening day; the interior is reached as a customer.

Opening days and hours can change, so check before travelling. The exterior can be seen from the road.

The Former Ichishi Haze Post Office stands at the centre of a settlement, surrounded by houses. Take care of the neighbours when photographing.

From Ise-Hata Station on the JR Meisho Line it is about ten minutes by car, and about 20 minutes from the Ichishi-Ureshino interchange on the Ise Expressway.