Former Kakuchi School (3)

2024-09-14

I revisited the former Kakuchi School in Sakaki Town, Nagano Pref. I had only seen the outside of the school before, so I intend to visit the inside this time.
The inside of the school is open for tours upon request to the Sakaki Town Library, which is located next to the school. The hours are from 10:00 to 16:00.

You will be given an application form at the library counter, which you can fill out and submit to enter the building. Admission is free.

After completing the formalities, I came to the front of the building. The entrance is framed by an archway, and the door is a little further back.
It seems that the students entered and exited through the side door, not through the main entrance.

The exterior walls of the building are plastered white. The lower half of the first floor wall has a masonry-like pattern, but this part of the wall seems to be a board wall with a masonry-like pattern on it, not plaster.

Interior of the entrance.
The glass door inside was probably newly made after the building was moved.

Through the glass door is the first floor corridor.

At the back of the entrance (on the right in the photo) is a room called the “visiting room,” where documents such as drawings of the school at the time, nails and hardware used in the building before its relocation, old window frame and louver window are on display.
It is said that only one wooden louver window remained before the relocation. All of the current windows were remodeled after the building was moved.

These are the documents in another room (teaching room). Textbooks and other materials from that period are stored here.

The building of the former Kakuchi School is now used as a museum, where they are still collecting materials. They are collecting not only the materials used in Kakuchi School, but also textbooks and other materials used in other schools.
In the next room, not only textbooks but also old magazines are stored.

Here is a section of postwar textbooks.
“JACK and BETTY” is an English textbook used from 1954 to 1971.

This is another room. The materials in this room were probably from the collection of the Sakaki Town Library.

Exit to the hallway and move to the south side.

The teaching room at the south end is a “restored classroom” with desks, chairs, and an organ.
There was also an abacus and a phonograph. A three-dimensional map of Japan is probably from the 1970s.
I did not check it myself, but I heard that there is a furnace under the floor here. It seems to have been a hearth for heating.

Next, let’s go upstairs. The staircase is located at the back of the entrance, next to the “visiting room".
The staircase now has a landing on the way up, but according to the drawings of the Meiji period and the drawings before the reconstruction, both are narrower than the current staircase, so it seems that the original staircase was a straight staircase.
I think the staircase was reconstructed to be easier to walk for the museum.

I went up the stairs to the second floor.
This is a large hall, which was called the “examination hall” before the removing and reconstruction.

In this room, old tools for daily life are displayed.
The alphabet A-shaped tool in the back of the room is a root extractor that pulls out the roots of mulberry trees.

Two plates, “Loyalty and Martyrdom” and “House of Honor".
These are the wooden plates that were posted at the entrances of houses where soldiers were killed in World War II.

In the teaching hall next to the hall was an exhibit on Meiji-era school buildings in Nagano Prefecture, including the Kano School in Tomi City and the Kaichi School in Matsumoto City.