Nara Prefectural Unebi High School

Nara Prefectural Unebi High School

Nara Prefectural Unebi High School (奈良県立畝傍高等学校) is a prefectural high school in Yagicho, Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, whose main school building completed in 1933, made up of a North Wing, a South Wing and a Connecting Corridor, was registered together with a small storehouse (former power room) as 4 Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 13, 2012 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). All four belong to Nara Prefecture and carry the consecutive registration numbers 29-0199 to 29-0202.

According to the school history, Nara Prefectural Unebi High School began in 1896 as the Unebi branch of the Nara Prefectural Ordinary Middle School and became Nara Prefectural Unebi Middle School in 1901. The present main building was completed on October 25, 1933.

From April 1945 the Imperial Navy's paymaster school occupied the building, and classes moved to borrowed rooms at the nearby Bansei Elementary School. The navy school was disbanded that September and the students returned. The 1948 education reform created Unebi High School in the former middle school's buildings, and a major renovation of the school buildings was finished in August 1990.

The Architect and the Japanese Touches

A 2010 report by Kurosaka Takahiro of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties cites the Unebi High School main building as an example of a school built in concrete with a Japanese character, and names its architect as Iwasaki Heitarō. The report notes the pyramidal Hōgyō-zukuri roof over the front entrance, crowned with a Sōrin spire of the kind seen on pagodas, and compares it with the same device on the old JR Nara Station.

The same report says Iwasaki was born in Shimoichi, worked on the repair of old temples and shrines in Kyoto, and later worked under the architect Takeda Goichi; it describes his style as more firmly rooted in tradition. At Nara Prefectural Unebi High School that approach is applied to a very large building: concrete blocks finished with traditional tiled roof edges and towers.

The Four Registered Buildings

The Agency records the North Wing as a 3-storey reinforced concrete block on the south side of the campus, facing north across the schoolyard, 94.7 metres from east to west, with a tiled pyramidal tower and a carriage porch at the centre of its front. The South Wing runs parallel behind it, also 3 storeys and 75.1 metres long, with a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri tower at the centre of its rear.

The 2-storey Connecting Corridor, 21.8 metres long, joins the middle of the two wings, and together the three form an I-shaped plan, written with the character 工. The Storehouse (Former Power Room) is a small single-storey timber building against the north side of the South Wing, with a truss exposed in its gable. Each building of Nara Prefectural Unebi High School has its own page.

Visiting

Nara Prefectural Unebi High School is a working school, and all four registered buildings are in daily use. No information on public visits was found on the school's official website (checked November 2026); entering the grounds requires the school's permission.

According to the school, it lies about 800 metres east of Yamato-Yagi and Yagi-Nishiguchi stations on the Kintetsu lines and about 600 metres east of JR Unebi Station. The school's page for parents and local residents links to an online virtual tour of the campus.