Former Kitamuro Hospital

About the Former Kitamuro Hospital

The Former Kitamuro Hospital (旧北室醫院, Kyū Kitamuro Iin) is a group of medical buildings in Handa, Tsurugi Town, Tokushima Prefecture, belonging to a country practice founded in 1868, and its seven structures, from a storehouse of 1878 to a garden gate of the early Showa era, were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 17, 2020. The site sits on the south bank of the Yoshino River, at the edge of a terrace that drops toward the water. Four buildings (a clinic, an inpatient ward, the family's main house and a storehouse) and three boundary works (a garden gate with an inner fence, an earthen wall and a stone retaining wall) together make up a single walled compound.

On March 19, 2020, the Council for Cultural Affairs recommended 133 structures across Japan for the register, and the seven Kitamuro entries appear there as a consecutive block. The Council's summary describes a rural practice that opened as a clinic of kanpō, the Japanese form of traditional Chinese herbal medicine, and later moved over to Western medicine.

The character 醫 in the name is the pre-war form of 医 ("medicine"), and the Agency for Cultural Affairs keeps it in the registered title.

From Herbal Medicine to Western Practice

The story of the Former Kitamuro Hospital is counted from 1868, the first year of Meiji, when the family began practicing as kanpō doctors. A fireproof storehouse for herbal ingredients went up in 1878, and in 1901 the main house was finished with a dispensary and consulting rooms along its front. Both belong to the herbal era.

The shift came in the Taisho period. In 1921 a new Western-style clinic was built west of the main house, with an inpatient ward joined to its north side by a covered corridor. The museum's website opens with a photograph of the opening day of this new hospital building. The earthen wall and the stone retaining wall followed in the late Taisho years, and the garden gate and inner fence in the early Showa era, so the compound's outer edges took their final form only after the practice had become a Western-style hospital.

The hospital suspended practice in 2007 and closed for good in January 2019, when its sixth director died. That ended 150 years of care counted from 1868.

Work to keep the buildings alive had started before then. Preparations for registration began in November 2018, and in 2019 a nonprofit, the Organization for Regional Medical Cultural Heritage Research, founded the Former Kitamuro Hospital Medical Museum. In June 2020 the clinic's exterior was repainted in colors matched to its original scheme and its doors and windows were repaired. The museum opened in August 2020, the same month as the registration, and has since recreated the operating room and the director's study and worked out the names and uses of the surviving instruments.

How the Compound Is Laid Out

The Former Kitamuro Hospital site steps down on its north side toward the Yoshino River. Piecing together the Agency's descriptions of each structure gives this plan:

• The main house stands in the southeast corner, facing south. The garden gate and inner fence run from the middle of the main house down to the earthen wall.
• The clinic stands west of center, facing south, with the ward behind it to the north, reached by the corridor.
• The storehouse stands east of the clinic, also facing south.
• The earthen wall encloses the eastern half of the south side and the whole east side, opening midway along the south to form the entrance to the main house.
• The stone wall runs from the northwest corner to the middle of the north side, holding up the ground above the river flats.

The formal entrance to the main house is the gap in the earthen wall on the south side, where the wall's ends turn inward and steer you toward the house. From just inside, two eras line up in view: the herbal doctor's house of 1901 and, to its west, the Western clinic of 1921. The ward is hidden behind the clinic, and the stone wall is best taken in from below, on the river side.

The Seven Registered Structures of the Former Kitamuro Hospital

All seven were registered on August 17, 2020, under consecutive numbers 36-0206 to 36-0212. The main house qualified as a model of form and design; the other six were registered for contributing to the historic landscape.

• Clinic: 1921, extended in the mid-Showa era; wooden, 2 storeys with a single-storey part (No. 36-0206)
• Ward: around 1921; wooden, single storey (36-0207)
• Main House: 1901, extended in the early Showa era; wooden, 2 storeys (36-0208)
• Storehouse: 1878; earthen-walled, 2 storeys (36-0209)
• Garden Gate and Inner Wall: early Showa era; wooden gate and board fence (36-0210)
• Earthen Wall: late Taisho era; 58 meters in total length (36-0211)
• Stone Wall: late Taisho era; 64 meters in total length (36-0212)

Visiting the Former Kitamuro Hospital

The Former Kitamuro Hospital is open by appointment as the Former Kitamuro Hospital Medical Museum. According to the museum's website, visits are free. Send your address, age, name and group size through the contact form or by email, and the staff will reply to arrange a date. Because of the caretaker's work schedule, Sunday from the morning until about 1 p.m. is usually the easiest time. A guided visit takes about an hour, and since visitors may handle some of the exhibits, each tour is limited to a small party of 2 to 4 people.

Photography is allowed as long as you respect the privacy of other visitors. In October 2025 the museum joined a nationwide open-house program run by the National Council for the Utilization of Modern Heritage, and 73 people came in without booking. Open days of this kind are held in some years, so check the museum's website and Instagram before you go.

By train, the museum is about a 15-minute walk from Awa-Handa Station on the JR Tokushima Line. The Council's listing gives the south end of Aoishi Bridge on National Route 192 as the landmark for drivers and notes parking for 5 cars. The museum gives its address as Matsubae 83-1, which differs from the lot numbers 182-1 and 183-1 in the Agency's database, so it helps to try both when searching on a map.

What to look for in each building, and how much of its interior can be seen, is covered on the individual pages.