Okayama Former Bank of Japan Hall (former Bank of Japan Okayama Branch Main Building)

A Bank Built to Look Like a Temple

Okayama Former Bank of Japan Hall (おかやま旧日銀ホール, the former Bank of Japan Okayama Branch main building, known today as Renaiss Hall) stands at Uchisange 1-6-20 in Kita Ward, Okayama City, completed in 1922 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 26 December 2005.

Note the word registered rather than designated. Registration is the lighter of Japan's two protective regimes, created in 1996 for buildings from the Meiji period onward, and it works by notification rather than permission. That distinction matters here because it is the reason the building is still in daily use as a concert venue instead of being preserved behind rope.

The Bank of Japan opened this as its fifteenth branch, on ground that had been part of the second bailey of Okayama Castle. The architect was Nagano Uheiji, who had trained under Tatsuno Kingo, the designer of Tokyo Station and the Bank of Japan head office, and who by the 1920s had become the country's leading specialist in bank buildings. Construction was carried out by Fujiki Komuten.

What Makes the Building Worth Registering

The registration was granted under the criterion covering works that set a standard of design, and the reasoning is visible from the pavement.

Four engaged columns with a slight swelling at mid-height, the entasis of Greek practice, carry a triangular pediment across the centre of the facade. Their capitals are Corinthian, cut with acanthus leaves in fine detail. Behind that portico the wall is brick and stone faced entirely in granite, and the roof is carried on a steel truss, a combination that lets the interior open into a wide column-free space beneath the classical shell. Recorded building area is 520 square metres over two storeys.

The effect was calculated. A provincial branch of the central bank in the early 1920s needed to project permanence in a city where most commercial building was still timber, and a classical temple front did that work more directly than any amount of scale would have. Visitors often compare the facade to the Maison Carrée at Nîmes.

Then came June 1945. Okayama was bombed and the city centre burned. This building came through it. Anyone counting pre-war architecture in central Okayama is working from a very short list, and that scarcity is part of why the registration matters.

From Vault to Concert Hall

The Bank of Japan closed its operations here in 1987, and the building sat while its future was argued over. The answer arrived in September 2005: conversion into Renaiss Hall, a multipurpose venue for the arts run under Okayama Prefecture's ownership. The registration followed three months later.

The conversion won the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize for achievement in 2012, which is a serious recognition in a field where adaptive reuse is often done badly.

The main hall seats up to 298 with a free layout and a ceiling nine metres above the floor, and it holds a Steinway. The old vault block now contains a gallery, a studio, work rooms and meeting rooms. The former document store has become a café, which is the part most casual visitors end up using.

Walk in and look up first. The height of that room is the single thing photographs consistently fail to convey.

Visiting

The building opens from 10:00 to 19:00, extending to 22:00 when rented for events, and closes on Tuesdays, with the following day taken instead when a Tuesday falls on a public holiday. It also closes over the new year period. There is no admission charge for entering the building or the café, though ticketed performances are exactly that.

The catch worth knowing in advance: the hall is booked for roughly seventy percent of its operating days. When a rental is running, the main room is not available to look around, so anyone travelling specifically to see the interior should check the schedule on the official site first. The café in the old document store keeps its own hours and is the reliable way in on a quiet afternoon. Photographing the exterior is unrestricted; inside, use judgement and ask if an event is in progress.

Getting there is easy. The Kenchō-dōri tram stop is immediately outside, about seven minutes from Okayama Station on the Okayama Electric Tramway toward Higashiyama, and Tenmaya Bus Station is three minutes on foot. There is no car park, so public transport is the practical choice.

Five minutes' walk away stands the Okayama Temperance Hall, a timber building of 1923 that also survived the raid and is likewise registered. Okayama Castle and Kōrakuen are a short walk east, which makes this corner of the city an efficient morning.