(Karuizawa Taliyasen Meiji 44th Year Building, Former Karuizawa Post Office | Shiozawa Lake, Karuizawa Town)
This building, the former Karuizawa Post Office, is a nationally registered tangible cultural property (registered in 2008) and was built in 1911 (Meiji 44).
In 1994 (Heisei 6), it was relocated from Old Karuizawa Ginza to the Taliesin grounds and renamed “Meiji 44 Building.”
The former post office building was upgraded to the only second-class post office in the Saku region as Karuizawa developed and many foreigners and government officials began staying there. It was constructed in conjunction with this change.
Currently, the building houses the “Fukazawa Beniko Wildflower Museum” and the restaurant “Sonnet.”
The Meiji 44 Memorial Hall is a two-story wooden building with a hipped roof. The walls are clad in German-style clapboard, commonly seen in villas in Karuizawa, and the roof is covered with heavy, impressive tiles.
The building is designed using characteristic European architectural techniques, giving it a sense of grandeur.
The central part of the memorial hall’s facade protrudes, and the entrances to the former post office are located on both sides and are still in use today.
All of the windows incorporate the “sliding window” design, a characteristic feature of Western architecture.
On both sides of the path leading from the main gate to the memorial hall, various wildflowers bloom throughout the seasons, creating a setting befitting a wildflower museum.
Beniko Fukasawa (1903-1993) deeply loved Karuizawa, a place she had been visiting since the 1930s, and continued to paint the many wildflowers that bloomed on the Asama Plateau in watercolors. The Beniko Fukasawa Wildflower Museum opened in July 1996 in the “Meiji 44th Year Hall,” a building that was formerly the Karuizawa Post Office and was relocated to Karuizawa Taliesin.
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