Takaoka Chamber of Commerce and Industry Fushiki Branch

A Bank Built for a Port at Full Tilt

The Takaoka Chamber of Commerce and Industry Fushiki Branch, formerly the Fushiki Bank (高岡商工会議所伏木支所（旧伏木銀行）, Takaoka Shōkō Kaigisho Fushiki Shisho), was a two-storey commercial building at 7-1 Fushiki Minatomachi in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, put up in 1910 and registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 20 December 1996. It was demolished in November 2025 after sustaining severe damage in the Noto Peninsula Earthquake of 1 January 2024. This article records what the building was and where its remains can now be seen.

Minatomachi was the business street of Fushiki. In the late Meiji period the port was the staging point for emigration to Hokkaidō, and the traffic through it included settlers, seasonal workers heading for the herring grounds, and travellers bound for Noto and the Toyama Bay coast. Shipping agents kept branches along the street. By the early Shōwa period six financial institutions operated on it. The demand for credit was real and constant, and the Fushiki Bank built its head office here in 1910 to meet it.

The building took the dozō-zukuri storehouse idiom of the Japanese merchant town as its base and then dressed it. Scratch tile faced the walls. Columns framed the entrance porch. Sash windows, a moulded cornice under the eaves, worked ceilings and a finished staircase inside carried the Western vocabulary through the building rather than leaving it on the street front. The result read as modern without abandoning the town's own building language.

Four Owners, One Building

The bank did not last as long as its premises. In 1929 the Fushiki Shokusan Bank and the Fushiki Bank merged to form the Fushiki Commercial Bank, and the building carried on through changes of occupant. In 1973 the Takaoka Chamber of Commerce and Industry bought it, and from the following year it operated as the Chamber's Fushiki Branch. The Chamber's own account describes the sequence as preservation through continued use, which is a fair summary: the building was maintained because it kept working, not because anyone had set it aside.

Registration followed on 20 December 1996, in the first months of Japan's newly introduced registration system for tangible cultural properties. The Chamber describes the building as Toyama Prefecture's number one registration in that first round, and a Toyama Shimbun report likewise called it the first registered tangible cultural property in the prefecture. The prefectural list is more even-handed: four properties in Toyama share the date of 20 December 1996, this building among them. Whichever framing is used, it belonged to the first group registered in the prefecture.

Local industrial history runs through the same address. Fujii Nozō, the merchant who drove the modernisation of Fushiki port in the Meiji period, belongs to the story of why a bank of this size made sense in a town of this size.

What Happened, and Where to Go Now

The earthquake of 1 January 2024 caused widespread liquefaction across the Fushiki district. The building tilted. Exterior tiles fell away, cracks opened in the walls, and interior walls collapsed. The Chamber moved its branch operations to the second floor of the Himi Fushiki Shinkin Bank's Fushiki Branch at 8-25 Fushiki Nishikimachi and looked for a way to repair the original premises. The liquefaction damage proved too severe. In December 2024 the Chamber applied for demolition under the publicly funded scheme, work began after late September 2025, and the building came down in November 2025.

Under Article 59, paragraph 3 of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, registration is cancelled when a registered building is dismantled. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record for this property can no longer be retrieved from its database, which is consistent with cancellation, though this article has not been able to confirm the formal notice. Toyama Prefecture's published list, last updated on 3 December 2024, still carries the entry.

There is somewhere to go. On 2 September 2025 the Chamber opened a permanent memorial exhibition on the second floor of the Takaoka Shōkō Building at 1-40 Marunouchi, Takaoka. Salvaged columns and the actual cultural property plaque are on display alongside explanatory panels, and a touch-screen presents 115 years of the building's history through photographs, drawings and a 360-degree interior view. The exhibition also introduces Fujii Nozō and other industrial figures of western Toyama. Opening hours are 9:00 to 17:00, admission is free, and it is open all year apart from the New Year period.

In Fushiki itself, other registered buildings remain. The former Fushiki Weather Station survives as the Fushiki Meteorological Museum. The Tanimura Family Residence Main Building of 1868 is still on the register. The Tanada Family Residence, damaged in the same earthquake and once considered for demolition, is instead being converted into a guesthouse and community space due to open in spring 2027. Shōkōji, whose Main Hall and Great Hall with Entrance Platform were designated National Treasures in December 2022, is about seven minutes on foot from Fushiki Station. The district is still under reconstruction, so expect roadworks.