Kakimoto Family Barracks (former Bando POW Camp)

The Kakimoto Family Barrack: A Surviving Witness to the Birthplace of Japan's First "Ode to Joy"

Tucked into the gentle hills of Naruto City in Tokushima Prefecture stands a modest single-story wooden building with a sweeping gable roof. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary rural structure. Yet this unassuming hall is one of only a handful of physical traces left from the Bandō Prisoner of War Camp, the legendary World War I site where Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed in full for the first time anywhere in Asia. Officially registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2004, the Kakimoto Family Barrack today welcomes visitors as the gift shop of the Roadside Station "Daiku no Sato" (Village of the Ninth), inviting travelers to step quite literally inside a living piece of Japanese-German friendship.

Historical Background: From Tsingtao to Bandō

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Japan, allied with Britain, attacked the German concession of Tsingtao (now Qingdao) in China. Roughly 4,700 German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers were captured and brought to twelve prisoner-of-war camps across Japan. In April 1917, those held at smaller facilities in Tokushima, Marugame, and Matsuyama were consolidated into a newly built camp in Bandō, on the rural outskirts of present-day Naruto City. About 953 prisoners would live there until the camp's closure in April 1920.

The Bandō camp became famous, both in Japan and in Germany, for the unusually humane treatment its prisoners received. Camp commander Colonel Matsue Toyohisa, the son of a former Aizu samurai who had himself known the bitterness of defeat after the Boshin War, insisted that the captives be treated with dignity. Prisoners ran their own bakery, brewed beer, published a German-language newspaper called Die Baracke, and gave more than 120 concerts and theatrical performances. On June 1, 1918, the Tokushima Orchestra of German prisoners performed the complete Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, the first such performance ever held in Asia. That single concert is the reason the area is celebrated today as the "Village of the Ninth."

What Is a "Barracke"?

The German word Baracke simply means "barracks." In Bandō, several long single-story wooden buildings of this type housed the prisoners. Each barrack was a long, narrow hall with a central earthen passage and low wooden floors on either side, partitioned roughly every two ken (about 3.6 meters) into living compartments. The basic structure consisted of brick foundations laid in the English bond pattern, sturdy wooden pillars, and a Western-style timber truss roof originally covered with natural slate.

When the camp closed in 1920 and the prisoners returned home, the buildings did not vanish overnight. After the Second World War they were repurposed as housing for Japanese repatriates from overseas territories. Later still, several were sold off to local farmers and dismantled, with their timbers reassembled as cattle sheds. The Kakimoto Family of Bandō purchased one such barrack and reused it as a cow barn for decades, unknowingly preserving a piece of international history within their farmstead.

Why the Kakimoto Family Barrack Was Designated a Cultural Property

By the early 2000s, only a handful of original barracks survived in any recognizable form. When experts surveyed the Kakimoto property, they discovered something remarkable: although the pillars and exterior finishes had largely been replaced over the years of farm use, the distinctive Western timber-truss roof framework, purlins, and many of the original rafters had been carefully kept in place. This made the building one of the most complete physical specimens of a Bandō barrack still in existence.

In 2006, the City of Naruto acquired the structure from the Kakimoto family and relocated it to a site beside the Naruto German House, where it was rebuilt as the gift shop of the new Roadside Station "Daiku no Sato." During reconstruction, the original truss work, purlins, pillars, and rafters were reused wherever possible. The exterior walls were restored using a Nankin lap-board pattern, and the roof was clad in a galvalume steel plate laid in a forty-five-degree diagonal pattern that echoes the spirit of the original design. The building was officially registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property on November 8, 2004, recognized as a rare and tangible reminder that even in the midst of war, friendship between peoples is possible.

Highlights and Things to Look For

Visitors entering the Roadside Station are often surprised to learn that the very ceiling above their heads is itself the cultural property. Look upward and you will see the bold geometry of the wooden roof trusses, including original timbers more than a century old. The interior also displays informational panels explaining the relocation history and the wartime origins of the building.

The building's overall footprint, about 27.3 meters long and 7.28 meters deep, gives some sense of the scale of life inside the camp, though the original barracks were considerably longer at roughly 73 meters each. Outside, the simple silhouette of a long gable-roofed hall against the hills evokes the atmosphere of the camp as it once stood. Inside, the shop sells local Naruto specialties, including German-style sausages and bread that nod to the camp's culinary legacy, as well as confections made from the famous Naruto Kintoki sweet potato.

Surrounding Attractions

The Kakimoto Family Barrack stands at the heart of a cluster of sites that together tell the story of Bandō. Right next door is the Naruto German House (Naruto Doitsukan), a museum dedicated to the prisoners' lives, the friendships they built with local townspeople, and the famous first performance of the Ninth Symphony, complete with a "Daiku Theater" featuring video and animatronic figures. A short walk away lies Doitsu Mura Park (German Village Park), the actual site of the former camp, where you can see exposed brick foundations of the original barracks, the prisoners' boating pond, and the memorial graves of eleven German soldiers who died in Shikoku.

For those willing to climb, the Bandō no Kane (Bell of Bandō) stands atop nearby Mount Maruyama at an elevation of 120 meters, built in 1983 as a symbol of Japanese-German friendship and lasting peace. The Kagawa Toyohiko Memorial Hall on the same grounds honors the local-born social reformer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. A little further afield, the famous Naruto Whirlpools and the Otsuka Museum of Art, which houses life-size ceramic reproductions of more than 1,000 masterpieces of Western art, make Naruto a rewarding base for at least a full day of exploration.