Konishi Choyokan New Palace

What the Konishi Choyokan New Palace Is

The Konishi Choyokan New Palace (小西朝陽館新御殿, Konishi Chōyōkan Shin-Goten) is a reception building of 1932 in Hashimotocho, Abeno Ward, Osaka City, listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017. It is a single-storey timber building with a hipped-and-gabled pantile roof, covering 125 square metres, and it is the youngest structure in the compound.

The word new distinguishes it from the older Palace nearby. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that this building replaced one lost in a fire in 1922, and that it was prepared so that Prince Haruhito of the Kan'in house could stay here during the army's special grand manoeuvres.

Choyo Gakuin, the school foundation endowed by the family, dates the fire instead to 1921 and describes it as a blaze that spread from a neighbouring property. The two accounts differ by a year, and the account followed here is the one in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database.

Why It Was Registered

The Konishi Choyokan New Palace was registered under the criterion for a model of design. It is a reception building like the Palace of 1912 beside it, but it was designed on a different assumption, and that difference is the point of the listing.

Guests here were expected to sit on chairs. The clear internal height was raised accordingly, so the lintels sit well above the level normal in a room meant for people seated on the floor. The ceiling is coffered with a raised cove, and a chandelier hangs from it. A Japanese formal ceiling and a European light fitting occupy the same plane.

The building is valued as an example of how a house receiving distinguished guests in the early Showa years settled the question of Japanese and Western manners. It also catches a transition, the years in which imperial receptions were moving off the tatami and onto chairs.

What to Look For

The first thing to register on entering the Konishi Choyokan New Palace is the height of the room. The plan, a main room of 15 mats with a smaller room of 8 mats beside it, is close to that of the older Palace. The impression is entirely different because of the raised internal height.

The clearest comparison is the lintel line. Note the height of the tops of the sliding screens in the older Palace, then look again here. The difference is plain.

The chandelier drops from the centre of the coffered cove. The timber grid and the metal arms sit in the same field of view. The people entertained in this room in 1932 were evidently at ease with both.

Outside, the roof is hipped and gabled with pantiles, and only the eaves are finished in copper. The join is not visible unless you get close. Seen from the garden, the ridge line runs lighter than that of the older Palace, and the handling of the pitch shows the twenty years between them.

Seeing the Building

The Konishi Choyokan New Palace is not normally open. It stands deep inside the compound and cannot be seen from the public road.

The interior is shown only on the guided days run by the Cultural Properties Protection Division of the Osaka City Board of Education, held in autumn to coincide with the nationwide opening of modernisation heritage sites. Places are applied for in advance by reply-paid postcard and allocated by ballot. The usual route reaches the Konishi Choyokan New Palace from the older Palace along the covered walk of the Moon-Viewing Pavilion, so both reception rooms are seen within a few minutes of each other. That is the chance to feel the difference in ceiling height rather than read about it.

Whether the chandelier is lit depends on the day. Photography rules are announced for each opening. Directions and the application procedure are on the Konishi Choyokan facility page.