Mie University Sansui Hall

An Alumni Hall of the Mie Agricultural and Forestry College

The Mie University Sansui Hall (三重大学三翠会館) is a timber Western-style building on the Mie University campus at Kamihama-cho, Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, built in 1936 as the alumni hall of the Mie Higher School of Agriculture and Forestry, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on February 14, 2002 (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Mie University).

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records two storeys of timber with a sheet-metal roof (formerly slate) and a building area of 309 square metres; registration number 24-0041, owned by Mie University.

A Tenth-Anniversary Hall

According to Mie University, the hall was built with alumni donations to mark the tenth anniversary of the Mie Higher School of Agriculture and Forestry, one of the university's predecessors. Work began on January 28, 1936, was finished about nine months later on September 24, and the hall opened on November 1.

The Mie University Sansui Hall has a Western-style meeting room on the ground floor and a tatami room upstairs, 501 square metres in all, and has been used for meetings, lodging and displays on the school's history. A veranda was added on the west side in 1972 for the 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Agriculture (Mie University).

Value as a Registered Cultural Property

The Mie University Sansui Hall was registered as a building that has become a model of design. Mie University notes its simple, economical and easily built style, typical of prewar provincial timber public buildings; it is the only surviving building from the days of the agricultural college (Mie University, Kankomie).

What to Look For

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it faces west, with a carriage porch projecting from the two-storey main block and a single-storey meeting wing to the south. Pilasters, window frames and a lively roofline give it a showy exterior. Kankomie adds that the basically hipped roof has a central gable to emphasise the front.

Mie University records that the 2002 restoration reused original materials as far as possible, kept the existing form inside and out, and added seismic strengthening. The west veranda, in a Meiji manner recalling the Glover House in Nagasaki, harmonises with the Sansui garden.

Visiting

The Mie University Sansui Hall is a university building on the Mie University campus, about 15 minutes on foot from Edobashi Station on the Kintetsu Nagoya Line (Kankomie). To arrange a visit, contact the Graduate School of Bioresources (059-231-9626).