Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall Annex

The front door of a 1930 guest complex

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

The annex stands on the grounds of the Konkokyo Research Institute, the research body of Konkōkyō. It was planned together with the guest hall and a Western-style building as a single facility for receiving visitors.

Why it was registered

The annex was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape. What counts here is less its individual design than the part it plays, with the guest hall and the Western-style building, in the ensemble on the hilltop.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it a finely built Japanese-style structure that forms a single unit with the guest hall. The roof repeats the hall's formula of a copper-clad hip-and-gable, and seen side by side the two clearly come from the same design.

A reception complex needs more than a reception room. Someone has to greet guests at the door, seat them while they wait and prepare food out of sight. The Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall Annex took on all of that work, leaving the main hall free for the guests themselves.

What to look for

The annex stands in front of the guest hall on the north side of the forecourt, facing south. It is a single-storey Irimoya-zukuri building with copper roofing, and a porch under its own small hip-and-gable roof pushes forward from the facade, so the same roof shape appears twice, one in front of the other.

Inside, the plan splits front and back. The entrance hall and waiting rooms occupy the front half, while the kitchen, bath and other service rooms fill the rear, a tidy division between welcome and back-of-house.

The corridors are the detail to watch. From the south-east corner of the annex, one covered passage runs east to the guest hall and another runs south to the Western-style building. With a building area of just 131 square metres, the Konkokyo Research Institute Guest Hall Annex is the smallest of the three, yet every route through the complex begins here.

Visiting

The annex is not open to the public. Okayama Prefecture lists the group as closed, and the grounds cannot be entered. The site is still used by the research institute, so any request to visit should go to Konkōkyō in advance.

No published guidance on photography was found.

Photographs of the porch-fronted facade appear on the Agency for Cultural Affairs database and on Asakuchi City's website.