Kagoshima Prefectural Culture Center, Cultural center and music venue in Yamashita-chō, Kagoshima, Japan.
Kagoshima Prefectural Culture Center is a multipurpose hall in Yamashita-chō, Kagoshima, with two basement floors and four above ground. Its single hall, seating 1,507 including 97 orchestra pit seats, has a one-slope auditorium from the first to third floors and a stage 20 m wide, 13.5 m deep and 8 m high. The fourth floor houses a branch of the Kagoshima Prefectural Museum with a planetarium and dinosaur fossils.
The center opened on 15 November 1966, combining a culture hall with a science museum that had a planetarium, dinosaur fossil room, physics and engineering exhibits and a laboratory; existing civic halls and gymnasiums had poor acoustics. In 1981 the prefectural museum's new building took over the science collections, while the planetarium and dinosaur room stayed as its annex. In 2006 the prefecture sold naming rights to Nishishuzo, brewer of the shochu Hōzan, giving the hall the nickname Hōzan Hall. Ceiling seismic work followed in 2018.
The hall's nickname, Hōzan Hall, comes from a naming-rights deal signed in 2006 with Nishi Shuzō, the distillery that makes the shochu Hōzan. In the forecourt stands a statue of Komatsu Tatewaki, a senior retainer of the Satsuma domain, sculpted by Nishimata Toshihiro in 1994. Kagoshima City Central Community Center is next door, and the Saigō Takamori statue faces it across the street.
The facility offers barrier-free access with elevators and accessible restrooms throughout the building. It sits about 15 minutes by bus from Kagoshima-Chuo Station, making it easily reachable by public transport.
The hall's naming rights were sold to Nishi Shuzo, maker of the shochu "Hozan", for 20 million yen a year under a five-year contract; since April 2006 the hall has carried the nickname Hozan Hall. In the forecourt stands a statue of Komatsu Tatewaki, a senior retainer of the Satsuma domain, made by Nishimata Toshihiro in 1994.
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