Minami Uchida Community Center

A Postwar Community Hall Built by Its Residents

The Minami Uchida Community Center (南内田公民館, Minami Uchida Kominkan) is a two-storey timber community hall completed in 1947 in Kataoka, Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture, which in 2014 was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that it faces east onto the road and is the oldest community hall in Nagano Prefecture among those newly built after the war, still in use as a base for local life. Shiojiri City likewise calls it reputedly the oldest surviving community hall in the prefecture.

It belongs to the Minami Uchida forestry cooperative, and the Agency records a renovation in 2011.

Built in Three Months

Shiojiri City says the decision to build came in the autumn of 1946, pressed by the local youth and women's associations.

Residents brought their own lunches to work on the site alongside the carpenters, and the hall was finished on 14 May 1947, a little over three months after work began. The timber came from large trees of Omiya Hachimangu, the local shrine, said to be several hundred years old, and from trees on land owned by the district.

Less than two years after the war, the district cut its own trees to give itself a place to meet.

Why It Was Registered

The Minami Uchida Community Center was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

The Agency points to its plan: a two-storey main block with an irimoya hip-and-gable roof, flanked north and south by single-storey wings that are also hip-and-gabled, each with its own entrance on the east side. It describes the result as a dignified exterior.

What to Look For

The east front is the one to see. The two-storey Irimoya-zukuri block rises in the centre, with a single-storey wing projecting on each side; Shiojiri City calls the front highly symmetrical.

The building covers 264 square metres under a tiled roof. From the road, the stepped line of the central roof and the two lower wing roofs, each over its own doorway, is easy to follow.

Visiting the Minami Uchida Community Center

The Minami Uchida Community Center is a working community hall, and no official information on interior visits was found. The exterior can be seen from the road on its east side.

Shiojiri City gives the address as 4156 Kataoka, Shiojiri; the Agency lists 4156 Wakamiya, Kataoka and adjoining lots. Enquiries about the cultural property go to the Shiojiri City cultural properties section on 0263-52-0904.