Former Ogata Koan Residence (Kitahama, Higashi Ward, Osaka)

A Merchant House That Became a School

The Former Ogata Kōan Residence (旧緒方洪庵住宅, Kyū Ogata Kōan Jūtaku), widely known as Tekijuku (適塾, formally Tekitekisai-juku 適々斎塾), is a late Edo-period townhouse in Kitahama, Chuo Ward, Osaka, designated an Important Cultural Property on 26 May 1964.

It stands on Kitahama 3-chome, wedged between office towers a five-minute walk from Yodoyabashi. Two storeys, a roof of sangawara pantiles, plaster and dark timber at street level. The scale is domestic. Nothing about the frontage announces that Japan's only surviving Dutch-studies academy is inside.

Ogata Kōan (1810 to 1863) was a physician trained in rangaku, the body of Western learning that reached Japan through Dutch traders at Nagasaki during the country's two centuries of restricted foreign contact. He opened his school in 1838 at Tsumura Higashi-no-chō, in what is now the Kawaramachi district. In 1845 he bought this house in the quarter then called Kashomachi and moved the academy into it. He taught here until shortly before his death.

The building carries two national designations. It became a National Historic Site in 1941 under the name Ogata Kōan Kyūtaku oyobi Juku, the former residence and school of Ogata Kōan. The architectural designation as an Important Cultural Property followed in 1964. The Ogata family donated the property to the state in 1942, and the University of Osaka has held and managed it ever since.

Why the Building Is Protected

Two arguments support the designation, and they pull in different directions.

The first is architectural. Osaka was bombed heavily in 1945, and very little pre-modern fabric survived in the commercial core. This house did. It gives a reading of how a well-off Osaka merchant family arranged its space in the closing decades of the Edo period, at a scale and level of finish that has almost vanished from the city centre.

The room list recorded in the national register is unusually detailed, and worth reading slowly. The ground floor runs to a twelve-and-a-half-mat room fitted with tokonoma alcove, staggered shelving and a built-in writing bay, then an eight-mat room, three four-and-a-half-mat rooms, a six-mat room, further four-and-a-half-mat and four-mat rooms, another eight-mat and six-mat pair, and the earthen-floored kitchen and entrance halls. Upstairs: an eight-mat room with alcove, alcove flank and veranda, a four-mat room, a stairwell, a seven-mat and a six-mat room. One barn and storehouse is listed as an attached structure.

Read that list against what happened here and the second argument emerges. The formal rooms downstairs served the physician and his guests. The upper floor housed students, who slept and studied in shared quarters. A signature register kept from 1844 lists 636 entrants; counting day students and those who came before the register began, the school's own centre estimates more than a thousand people passed through, and some accounts put the figure far higher.

The names that came out of those upstairs rooms shaped the following century. Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of Keio University. Ōmura Masujirō, architect of the modern Japanese army. Hashimoto Sanai. Ōtori Keisuke. Sano Tsunetami. Nagayo Sensai, who built Japan's public health administration. Takamine Jōkichi, the chemist who isolated adrenaline. Kōan himself worked on smallpox vaccination and cholera treatment, and after his death the school's alumni founded the hospital and medical school that grew into the University of Osaka.

Visiting: What to Look For

The interior you walk through today is a reconstruction of the Edo-period arrangement. Alterations made during the Meiji and Taisho eras were reversed in a restoration campaign that ran from 1976 to 1980, and the house opened to the public in 1980.

Head upstairs. The large shared room where students worked is the reason most people come, and it is where the building stops being a piece of architecture and becomes a place. The school owned a copy of the Doeff dictionary, the Dutch to Japanese lexicon that was the only route into a European text for most students. Copying from it was done in shifts, and the room set aside for the dictionary is said to have kept a lamp burning through the night.

Downstairs, the garden views repay a pause. A courtyard opens off the entrance passage, and the main guest room looks south onto a small planted garden. Whether the planting dates from the same period as the house is not established, but the arrangement of stepping stones from a large Kurama stone at the threshold reads much like the townhouse gardens of Kyoto in the same era.

Next door, a small historic-site park holds a bronze figure of Kōan, seated and reading.

Practical Information

Opening hours are 10:00 to 16:00. The house closes on Mondays (open when the Monday is a public holiday), on the day following a public holiday (open when that day falls on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday), and from 28 December to 4 January. Storms, disasters and disruption to public transport can trigger closure without notice.

Admission is 400 yen for adults and 200 yen for high school and university students, reduced to 300 and 100 yen for groups of twenty or more. Junior high school students and younger enter free, but children of that age cannot visit without an accompanying adult. University of Osaka students, holders of disability or atomic-bomb survivor certificates and their companion, members of the Tekijuku Memorial Society, and licensed guide-interpreters are admitted without charge.

Shoes come off at the entrance and socks are required, so plan your footwear. Eating, drinking and smoking are not permitted inside. The staircase is steep and some ceilings are low.

Personal photography is allowed except where a no-photography panel is displayed. Tripods, reflectors and selfie sticks cannot be used, and lingering in one spot to shoot is discouraged. Any photography beyond personal use requires written permission from the university, submitted at least three working days in advance. Do not touch fittings, furnishings, walls, window frames or doors.

From Yodoyabashi Station, take exit 18 or 19 on the Keihan Line or exit 8 on the Osaka Metro Midosuji Line; from Kitahama Station, exit 24 on the Keihan Line or exit 2 on the Osaka Metro Sakaisuji Line. All are about five minutes on foot. Minor repair work is carried out from time to time and can leave parts of the house in an unusual state, so check the official site before travelling.