Okinaza (Theatre)

Okinaza is a wooden theatre in Joge, a town in the north of Fuchu in Hiroshima Prefecture that grew up as a post town on the Sekishu Kaido road in the Edo period. It opened in 1927 and is the only wooden theatre building from before the war still standing in the Chugoku region. It was entered on the national register of tangible cultural properties in 2020.

Building began in 1923 and the frame was raised in 1925. The theatre opened two years later as a playhouse for kabuki. Touring companies used it after that, and later it became a cinema, with a projection room put in on the upper floor. Actors from the films of the day appeared on its stage around the end of the war.

It closed about 1960. The building was altered for other uses over the following decades but was never pulled down, and in 2018 it was given to the city of Fuchu.

The hall keeps the shape of an older playhouse. The upper floor opens onto the space below, with boxed galleries running around three sides of it, and the floor is matted and slopes towards the stage. The balustrades carry onion-shaped finials, and the ceiling is coffered, with the centre stepped up above the rest.