Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall

A 1930 reception hall on a hill above Konko

The Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall (金光教教学研究所客殿, Konkōkyō Kyōgaku Kenkyūsho Kyakuden) is a single-storey Japanese-style reception building erected in 1930 on a hill in Otani, Konkō-chō, Asakuchi City, Okayama Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 2 November 2018.

The hall stands on the grounds of the Konkokyo Research Institute, the research body of Konkōkyō, a religious movement founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Covered corridors join it to two companions built the same year: an annex that served as its entrance and a two-storey Western-style building with a small tower.

Why it was registered

Japan's registration system uses several criteria, and the guest hall was listed as a building that sets a model for design. Its annex and the Western-style building were registered on different grounds, as contributors to the historic landscape, which makes the hall the architectural centrepiece of the group.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall as a fine example of early Shōwa Japanese-style architecture in which modern planning and traditional carpentry work together at a high level.

You would not guess the modern part from outside. According to Asakuchi City, the heavy roof is carried on a timber truss, a triangulated frame borrowed from Western building practice, hidden beneath a thoroughly Japanese Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable profile.

The plan tells the same story. A central corridor turns a right angle through the building and serves four Zashiki reception rooms, but these were laid out for chairs rather than for sitting on tatami, a Japanese interior adapted to the Western-style entertaining that official visitors of the period expected.

What to look for

The hall faces west from the middle of the site. Its copper-clad roof runs north to south, and a lean-to skirt roof, or Geya, wraps all four sides, so the eaves read as two stacked layers. With a building area of 349 square metres it is the largest of the three registered buildings.

The layout makes most sense as a courtyard composition. In front of the hall, the annex stands to the north and the Western-style building to the south, and covered corridors running from the annex tie all three together. Visitors arrived at the annex and were led along the corridor into the Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall.

Pairing a low Japanese reception hall with a two-storey Western block was a common way for prestigious institutions of the early Shōwa period to receive guests, and here the two faces of that formula still stand side by side.

Visiting

The Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall is not open to the public. Okayama Prefecture lists it as closed, and the grounds and interiors cannot be entered. The institute still works here as the faith's research body, so anyone with a genuine reason to visit should contact Konkōkyō in advance.

No published guidance on photography was found.

Exterior photographs are posted on the Agency for Cultural Affairs database and on Asakuchi City's website, and they show the Japanese hall and the Western-style building facing across their forecourt.