School Hall

The stage at the far end of this hall is bare timber and concrete, holding its shape against the decay surrounding it. Sunlight reaches across the floor from somewhere to one side, picking out the texture of a surface that has had decades to come apart. Nothing remains on the stage. The room is otherwise stripped, its walls stained, its floor fractured. This is what the school hall at Ogurawa Elementary and Middle School looked like in 2016, before the building was demolished in 2025. The school began as a private institution. In 1935, Yanagase Sadazo established Chichibu Gakuen at the mine settlement to educate the children of workers in a valley too remote for any public school to reach. Otaki Village took it over as a public school in 1948. A fire destroyed the original building; the replacement was completed in November 1952, a two-storey structure combining reinforced concrete and timber, covering 2,336 sqm on a 4,696.89 sqm site. The building featured ceramic tile art, sculptures and paintings. Arts education was a deliberate priority. The school's enrolment tells the story of the Ogurawa settlement more precisely than almost any other record. At its peak in 1959, 274 students were enrolled. By 1972, the number was 160. By 1973, it had dropped to 85. Metal mining at Chichibu Mine ceased entirely in 1978, and families left with it. By 1984, 7 students remained. The school closed in March of that year, and its students transferred to schools in Otaki Village. The Ogurawa settlement was classified as uninhabited in September 2006. The school building stood empty for another 19 years after that, weathering each winter in the narrow Nakatsugawa valley. Chichibu City approved its demolition in 2024, with a budget of ¥68 million. The building was gone by April 2025, and the land returned to Nitchitsu Co. Ltd., which had owned the site throughout the school's entire existence. This photograph, made in 2016, is one of the records that remain.