Okabe Memorial Hall Kinrinso

Okabe Memorial Museum “Kinrinso” has a circular Japanese garden and is surrounded by a stone wall made of local Isoyama stone (no longer produced).

The building was constructed in the middle of the Meiji period by Kyushiro Okabe, who collected building materials over a period of many years and trained carpenters and joiners in Tokyo for three years. The two-story wooden structure is a fireproof storehouse.

The interior is characterized by the use of ebony, ebony, and ironwood for all the alcove sections. Many of the paintings, calligraphies, and antiques in the interior are by authors closely associated with the region.

It was used as a villa of the Okabe family until 1952, as a venue for entertaining related parties and for displaying draperies. After that, it was used as a kappo restaurant “Kinrinso” until June 1988. In August of the same year, the city rented the building and decided to preserve it as the Okabe Memorial Museum “Kinrinso” in order to pass it on to future generations as a historical and cultural heritage of 100 years of Moka City’s modern era.

It was designated as Tochigi Prefecture Tangible Cultural Property (building) on January 14, 2000, and together with the buildings of the Bussan Kaikan and Cotton Studio (now Cotton Hall), was donated to Moka City by the Okabe family in January 2001.