Nippon Sei Ko Kai Chubu Diocese Inariyama All Saints Church

A Concrete Church on the Zenkoji Road

The Nippon Sei Ko Kai Chubu Diocese Inariyama All Saints Church (日本聖公会中部教区稲荷山諸聖徒教会) is a single-storey reinforced concrete church completed in 1933 in Inariyama, Chikuma City, Nagano Prefecture, which in 2023 was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs places it on the old Zenkoji Road near the former post town of Inariyama. The gabled church stands on a raised base, with a tiled roof and rendered walls, and covers 167 square metres. It was renovated in 1987 and extended in 2003.

It belongs to the Chubu Diocese of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Church in Japan, which gives the church's English name as Inariyama All Saint's Church.

From a Meiji Mission to a Showa Church

According to the diocese, Christian mission work in Inariyama began in 1895 under the Canadian missionary J.G. Waller and Ushiyama Seishiro.

The present church was finished in 1933. The diocese records that the building was completed and consecrated through the determination of local members.

Country churches of the time were usually timber. The Inariyama All Saints Church was built in reinforced concrete, and the Agency singles it out as a valuable example of a modern concrete church in a provincial town. It was registered as a building that has become a model of design.

What to Look For

Outside, the broad gable end and the piers along both sides draw the eye first. The Agency calls them buttress-style piers: the outline of the stone buttresses of a Gothic church, rendered here as pilasters on a concrete wall.

The 2022 recommendation of the Council for Cultural Affairs notes the round-arched windows set between those piers. Seen at an angle from the road, the rhythm of pier and window along the raised side wall is clear.

Inside, the plan is a single aisle. The Council's description sets the congregation seating, sanctuary and inner sanctuary on one axis; the Agency database lists the same three spaces in a different order. There is an ossuary beneath the church.

Visiting the Inariyama All Saints Church

The Nippon Sei Ko Kai Chubu Diocese Inariyama All Saints Church is a working church. The diocese lists a Sunday service at 10:30 a.m., either a Eucharist or a service of the Word. To see the interior at other times, contact the church in advance on 026-273-2051.

The church is about 10 minutes by car from Yashiro Station on the Shinano Railway or from Inariyama Station on the JR Shinonoi Line, and about 15 minutes from the Koshoku interchange on the Nagano Expressway. The Agency gives the address as 198-2 Isemiya, Inariyama and adjoining lots; the diocese uses 198 Haruta-machi, Inariyama.