Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall

What Is Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall?

Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall is a group of school buildings on the campus of Notre Dame Seishin University in Ifukucho, Kita-ku, Okayama City, whose Main Building and East Building, both completed in 1929, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan on July 31, 2007.

The Japanese name is ノートルダム清心女子大学ノートルダムホール (Nōtoru Damu Seishin Joshi Daigaku Nōtoru Damu Hōru). The architect was Antonin Raymond and the builder was Obayashi-gumi, today's Obayashi Corporation. According to the university archives, the two buildings were finished in December 1929 and were the first structures put up on the present site in Ifukucho. "Notre Dame" is French for "Our Lady," a title of the Virgin Mary, and the university shares the name.

The university has since added a West Building (1978) and a 12-storey Central Building (1995) under the same Notre Dame Hall name. Only the two early Showa-era buildings, the Main Building and the East Building, are registered cultural properties.

A New Campus for a Girls' High School

The school traces its roots to Okayama Jogakko, a private girls' school opened in Okayama in 1886 and renamed Seishin Koto Jogakko (Seishin Girls' High School) in 1911. In 1924, six sisters of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur arrived from the order's Waltham Province in Massachusetts and took over its management.

The school then stood in Yuminocho, in central Okayama. In 1929 Notre Dame Hall went up in Kamiifuku, then still farmland on the city's northern edge, and the school moved there the following year. The university's own history says the new building was praised at the time as the finest in the Orient.

The Pacific War reached the campus. The American sisters were interned and later repatriated, and the Main Building and East Building, known for their brilliant white walls, were painted black so they would not stand out to bombers. Fourteen students died in the air raid on Okayama on June 29, 1945, but Notre Dame Hall itself survived. The university notes that only five reinforced concrete buildings in the city came through the raid intact.

The sisters returned in October 1946, and the black paint was later covered with white again. Okayama Seishin Women's College, opened in 1944, became Notre Dame Seishin University in 1949, and Notre Dame Hall has served as a university building ever since.

The Two Registered Buildings of Notre Dame Hall

The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended the Main Building and East Building for registration in March 2007, and both were entered in the register on July 31, 2007, as numbers 33-0154 and 33-0155. Both are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (buildings), listed under the criterion that they serve as a model of architectural form.

• Main Building: two storeys, reinforced concrete, with a building area of 3,250 square meters. It stands on the south side of the campus around a square inner courtyard and holds the university's main entrance.
• East Building: three storeys, reinforced concrete, with a building area of 2,176 square meters. It stands east of the Main Building with the university chapel at its center, and it first served as the sisters' convent.

Antonin Raymond (1888 to 1976) was born in what is now the Czech Republic, emigrated to the United States, and came to Japan as an assistant to Frank Lloyd Wright on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. He went on to spend half his life in Japan, leaving modernist works such as Tokyo Woman's Christian University and the Gunma Music Center. Kunio Maekawa, architect of the Okayama Prefectural Government Building, trained in his office. The university describes Notre Dame Hall as one of the few Raymond buildings in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions.

In July 2018 the Main Building and East Building were also named to DOCOMOMO Japan's selection of modern movement architecture in Japan for fiscal 2017.

How the Notre Dame Hall Buildings Are Arranged

The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes the Main Building as set on the south of the site and facing south, with its main entrance at the southeast corner. The East Building lies east of the Main Building and faces east. The long, low Main Building stresses the horizontal, while the chapel front and bell tower of the East Building rise vertically, so the pair reads as a deliberate contrast when seen together.

Behind the East Building's chapel stands the tall Central Building of 1995. The university presents this overlap of a 1929 facade and a modern tower as an expression of its habit of weighing what may change and what must not.

Getting to Notre Dame Seishin University Notre Dame Hall and Arranging a Visit

Notre Dame Seishin University is about 900 meters north of the west exit of JR Okayama Station, roughly a 10-minute walk. There is no visitor parking on campus, so come by train or bus.

Notre Dame Hall is a working university building and cannot be entered freely. The university accepts visit requests from individuals and groups through the contact form on its website, under the option for facility tours, with first and second choices of date and time slot. Individuals should apply at least one week ahead, and groups are asked to get in touch in advance. Requests go to the university's public relations office, which is open on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except university holidays.

Visits focus on the exteriors. Photography on campus is limited to building exteriors, and photographing students, building interiors, or the inside of the chapel is not allowed. Classrooms, laboratories, and the library are off limits, and classes cannot be observed.

The university also runs a guided viewing of the Notre Dame Hall Main Building and East Building. For fiscal 2026 it is scheduled for Saturday, October 24, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., for up to 20 people on a first-come basis, free of charge, with applications by phone or email. Participants receive an entry pass that must be shown at the gate. The university archives add that students lead campus tours for local residents during the annual school festival.