Jisen Kaikan

Jisen Kaikan was commissioned in 1932 by Jinkichi TERADA as a social club facility to commemorate the great work of Jinyoshige TERADA, the founder of Kishiwada Spinning Co. It was designed by the architect Setsu WATANABE and constructed by the Obayashi Corporation. It was later donated to Kishiwada City after Jinkichi retired as mayor of Kishiwada. After the donation, the building was mainly used as a meeting hall and a guest room. After the war, it was used as a meeting hall for the city council, and is now open to the public as a venue for cultural activities in Kishiwada. The building is notable for being one of the smaller works by Setsu WATANABE. The building has a simple, undecorated exterior, but the entrance, with its colonnaded arcades, shows stylistic motifs of early modern Spanish architecture. The chandeliers, staircase balustrades and other decorative metal objects were lost during the war due to the metal recovery order, but the building retains much of its original design.