Ōya History Museum

Interesting facts

Before machines arrived around 1960, cutting a single standard block by hand took some 4,000 swings of a pickaxe, and a quarryman managed about ten a day.

Each standard wall block weighed around 80 kilograms, and workers carried blocks of up to 140 kilograms on their backs out of the deep pits.

The tuff formed in the early Miocene, when most of Japan still lay under the sea and volcanic ash and gravel settled on the seabed.

Freshly cut Ōya stone is bluish with moisture and dries to a brownish white; its brown flecks, called "miso", are softer clay minerals that weather fastest.

At the industry's peak in the late 1960s, about 120 quarries were working the stone, and remaining reserves are estimated at some 600 million tonnes.

Frank Lloyd Wright first chose a stone from Shimane for the Imperial Hotel, but switched to Ōya stone because the other was too scarce.

The entrance of Wright's Imperial Hotel, built with Ōya stone, was saved and rebuilt at the Meiji Mura open-air museum near Nagoya.

In 1989 the ground above an old quarry nearby collapsed, leaving a crater about 70 metres across and 30 metres deep.

Other abandoned quarry caverns in the area are used to store and age wine, sake and even natto.

Utsunomiya's famous gyoza statue outside the main station is carved from Ōya stone.

Why it is worth it

Beneath the hills on the western edge of Utsunomiya, a flight of steps leads down into a man-made cavern so large it seems to have been built rather than dug: an underground quarry of about 20,000 square metres, around 30 metres deep on average, with sheer pale-green walls and square-cut pillars receding into the dim light. This is the old Ōya stone quarry, opened to the public in 1979 as the Ōya History Museum. The air below stays cool all year round, and the vast space has been used for concerts, theatre, art exhibitions and as a film set.

Ōya stone is a green volcanic tuff, formed from lava and ash, found only in an area of about four by six kilometres around the town of Ōya. It is soft, easily carved and fire-resistant, and it has been used for a very long time: as coffins in the Kofun period, and in the eighth century for foundation stones and facings of the provincial temple and nunnery of Shimotsuke. The rock-cut Buddhist images of the nearby Ōya-ji temple, including its Thousand-armed Kannon, date from the Heian period. Its most famous modern use was by Frank Lloyd Wright, who chose it to clad his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

The quarry beneath the museum was worked for about seventy years, from 1919 to 1986, producing stone for walls and retaining structures. In 1943 the army used it as a secret underground storehouse, and in 1945 it housed an underground munitions factory used by Nakajima Aircraft for production of the Type 4 fighter. From 1969, because of the steady low temperature, the government used it to store rice. The museum above ground explains the geology of the area, the ways the stone was cut and the history of its transport.

Getting there

The museum is in Ōya-machi, Utsunomiya, about 6 km from the city centre. Buses run from the west exit of JR Utsunomiya Station and from Tobu Utsunomiya Station to the Shiryōkan-iriguchi stop, a short walk away; by car it lies near the Utsunomiya and Kanuma interchanges of the Tōhoku Expressway. Ibaraki Airport (IBR) is about 70 km away in a straight line.

Ōya History Museum

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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