Into the Countryside for Architecture

Utsunomiya — Nakagawa to Nasushiobara

I stopped in Utsunomiya for two nights specifically to visit one project, the Nakagawacho Bato Hiroshige Museum by Kengo Kuma. It is about an hour and a half away by bus way out in to the countryside.

This is a project that I looked at a lot during school so I wanted to see it in person. It didn’t dissappoint. It’s an interesting play of light and shadows with two sets of louvers in the roof above and below glass panels. The building form is quite simple but has an opening between two buildings which are connected by the roof. This is a pretty signature point of Kengo Kuma’s architecture but nonetheless a very nice space to be in.

The museum gallery itself is actually quite small in porportion to the building but is filled with Ukiyo-e woodblock prints so the content is quite interesting.

On the backside of the museum is a path that connects to a bamboo groove and the hillside where there’s a shrine above. With three hours to kill waiting for the return bus, I became very familiar with the shrine and the nearby park. There’s really nothing else in the town.

Oddly the bus back went to a different station that was further away but the fare was cheaper. I didn’t mind because it let me visit the Nasushiobara City Library by Mari Ito + UAo. I really enjoyed this library because of the triangulated roof but also because the second floor feels like a mezzanine with many openings to the ground level. I also noticed that the bookstakes in Japanese libraries are usally quite far apart and low, as if displaying books rather than storing them. Western libraries are trying to cram as much storage into as little space as possible but Japanese libraries are about the openess. Unsurprsingly, they’re much more comfortable places to read and study.

On the way back to Utsunomiya I also made a stop at Chokkura Shelter and Plaza, another Kengo Kuma project. This is a small plaza beside the train station but there isn’t much, only a cafe, store, and liquor store. Architecturally it’s an interesting project because stone is cut into a unique shape and used as a screen. This stone is a popular local building material but usually it is used tpically as panels or tiles.

When I visited it was about 6 or 7 at night and the only people passing through were going home. I wondered if it would be livelier during the day or on the weekend.

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