Wakayama Prefectural Office Main Building

The 1938 Prefectural Hall That Survived the War: Wakayama's Main Government Building

Few government offices in Japan have stayed at their posts for as long as the main building of the Wakayama prefectural government. Completed in 1938, it is the third prefectural hall built since the Meiji reforms, and it still functions today as the seat of the administration. Pale yellow tiles cover the walls, paired arched windows march across the facade in even ranks, and terracotta ornament crowns the parapet and the entrance porch. The plan, an E shape with a central wing and flanking arms reaching back behind the main block, was laid out so that every room caught daylight and a breeze, a practical concern in the years before air conditioning.

The building belongs to the wave of dignified reinforced concrete civic architecture that prefectures across Japan commissioned in the 1930s. Its design was deliberately modeled on the National Diet Building in Tokyo, and it bears a strong family resemblance to the Toyama prefectural hall, which shares the same lineage. A visitor approaching from the front garden climbs to the porch and enters through a deep car porch, the granite floor and terracotta planters setting a tone of restrained ceremony.

A Modern Building for an Anxious Age

The hall was designed by Masuda Hachiro, an engineer in the prefecture's own employ, who had just come from supervising the very similar Toyama prefectural office. To bring the newest technology to the project, the prefecture engaged Uchida Yoshikazu, a Tokyo Imperial University professor and a pioneer of reinforced concrete and steel construction in Japan, as supervising adviser; his graduate student Tsuboi Yoshikatsu handled the structural design. The contractor was Shimizu-gumi, today's Shimizu Corporation. Work began in September 1936 and the building was finished in April 1938.

The choice of reinforced concrete was a response to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Rather than aim for lavish display, the prefecture wanted a sober, up-to-date building that could keep functioning in an emergency, and it got one. When much of central Wakayama burned in the air raid of 1945, the prefectural hall came through the fire, and it has remained in continuous use ever since, repaired and seismically strengthened over the decades. It is now one of only a handful of prewar prefectural offices in Japan still serving their original purpose.

In 2013 the building was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties under the criterion of serving as a model of design. Registration is a lighter form of protection than designation as a National Treasure or Important Cultural Property. Created in 1996 with the modern era especially in mind, it acknowledges architectural and historical value while allowing the owner, here the prefecture itself, to keep the building in active service.

Details Worth Seeking Out

The exterior repays a slow walk along the front. Run your eye up to the parapet and the entrance, where the terracotta work concentrates: window surrounds, the framing of doorways, and the canopy of the car porch all carry that warm fired ornament against the cool tile. The deep porch itself, with its broad overhanging eave, is the building's most photographed feature and the easiest way to read the architect's ceremonial intent.

Inside, two spaces stand out. The central staircase hall holds a relief sculpture by Yasuda Ryumon, a Wakayama-born artist, set into the landing wall, a work that rewards a pause on the way up. On the fourth floor, the seicho, the formal reception hall, keeps much of its original interior and ranks among the finest rooms of its kind in a Japanese prefectural office.

Because this is a working government building, the exterior can be appreciated freely at any time, and the public areas are generally accessible during business hours, though the formal interiors such as the seicho are not always open. The hall sits within a cluster of prefectural cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Prefectural Museum, so it pairs easily with a wider day in the civic quarter of Wakayama City.