Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office

Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office: The First Office and Home on the Site

The Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office (久金属工業技術室, Hisa Kinzoku Kōgyō Gijutsushitsu) is a two-story timber building beside the east gate of a bottle-cap maker's head-office factory in Kitatsumori, Nishinari Ward, Osaka City, built in 1934, the year the factory moved here, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on February 4, 2021.

It covers 71 square meters under an irimoya roof of pantiles, with a lean-to Geya half a bay deep wrapping the west and south sides.

It began life as the factory office and the owner's home in one. The ground floor had a work room by the entrance and a reception room in the northeast corner, and the upper floor held tatami rooms. Today the former office is where products, machines and jigs are designed and drawn, which is how the building got its present name.

Why the Technical Office Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office preserves the look of the company's earliest days on this site. Its formal criterion is contribution to the historic landscape.

The company moved to Kitatsumori in July 1934, and this building dates from that move. At first it served as the factory office next to the main gate, which is the gate now called the east gate, with the guard room still standing inside it.

An office and a family's living rooms under one roof is how a small factory worked before it could afford separate buildings. The purpose-built office and the president's office came a few years later.

What to Look For: A Coffered Ceiling and the Upstairs Rooms

The reception room at the back of the ground floor has a coffered ceiling and still has its original light fittings. It is the one room downstairs where money was spent on the ceiling, a sign of how much a proper place to receive customers mattered to a company that had just moved in.

Upstairs is a tatami room fitted with a Shinto household shrine and a Buddhist altar. The company says the founder used this room, and that a smaller room next to it was set aside for employee welfare.

Outside, the tiled irimoya roof sits above a second, lower roof over the lean-tos, giving the Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office the calm profile of a townhouse. It makes a clear contrast with the tile-faced, Western-leaning office building of 1937.

Visiting the Technical Office

The Hisa Kinzoku Kogyo Technical Office is still the design team's workplace, so the interior is normally closed. The coffered reception room and upstairs tatami rooms can be seen only when an open-house tour includes them, and the 2024 Open House Osaka listing warned of steep stairs.

The building stands by the east gate, with the former president's office and the quality control office following in a line to the south. If you get the chance, walk the row from north to south and compare how each building's roof and walls were finished.