Museum Meiji-mura, Architectural museum in Inuyama, Japan.
Museum Meiji-mura is an open-air museum near Inuyama that gathers more than 60 historical buildings across hills beside Lake Iruka. The structures include homes, churches, public buildings, and bridges relocated and rebuilt from across Japan.
Architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and Meitetsu president Motoo Tsuchikawa, classmates at Fourth High School, formed the Meiji-mura foundation on 16 July 1962 after watching the Rokumeikan come down. Meitetsu donated the lakeside land, and the museum opened at Lake Iruka on 18 March 1965 with 15 buildings, among them the Sapporo Telephone Exchange and St. John's Church. The collection has since grown to 67 structures, 11 of them Important Cultural Properties.
The name honors the Meiji era (1868–1912), when Japan opened to the West and adopted European building styles. The preserved structures show this mix of Western architecture and Japanese craftsmanship in timber and masonry.
Visitors can ride steam locomotives, streetcars, shuttle buses, or horse-drawn carriages to move between sites. Walking paths connect the buildings, with gentle slopes and several lookout points across the grounds.
The former Sapporo Telephone Exchange, built of Sapporo soft stone in 1898, has arched windows on the ground floor and lintelled windows above, with a band of floral motifs running beneath the upper windows. It was the first building chosen for relocation, decided at the third preparatory committee meeting in January 1962.
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