Old Hachiman Post Office
The Old Hachiman Post Office building, completed in 1921, was designed by William Merrell Vories (1880–1964), an American-born architect, missionary, and businessman who lived and worked in Omihachiman for the greater part of his life. Vories’s design is an eclectic blend of Spanish colonial and Japanese styles, a combination the architect would employ frequently in his later works. The building was used as a post office until 1961 but fell into disrepair for several decades before an intervention by local nonprofit organization Hitotsubu no Kai, established in 1997 and dedicated to the structure’s revitalization.
The Old Hachiman Post Office now functions as a gallery and event space and is open to the public on weekends and national holidays between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. There is a small cafe on the first floor, where the original post office counter has been preserved, and the telephone exchange room upstairs is used for exhibitions and other events.