Hirosaki Civic Hall (弘前市民会館)

The civic hall stands in Hirosaki Park, within the historic castle site, next to the city museum, with Mount Iwaki in the distance. It was completed in April 1964, and the opening ceremony took place on 1 May.

Kunio Maekawa designed and supervised the building. The structural design was the work of Fugaku Yokoyama's office, the acoustics that of Kiyoteru Ishii. In the text he signed in April 1964, Maekawa counts two years and five months since the start of design and one year and six months since the start of construction, and writes that a building is not finished until its surroundings are laid out, which the budget had not yet allowed.

Almost fifty years after its completion, the hall underwent a major renovation, finished in December 2013. It was designed by Mayekawa Associates, the firm Maekawa founded, with a local architects' office, and the building reopened on 5 January 2014. Lifts were installed, all the seats in the hall replaced, the air conditioning and stage machinery renewed, the roof waterproofing redone, and the exposed concrete of the outer walls repaired and protected against carbonation. The stage curtain was recreated, and the stained-glass window was installed on 22 November 2014, for the building's fiftieth anniversary.

Together with the neighbouring city museum, the hall received the BELCA award, long-life building category, for fiscal year 1996. Its renovation received a special prize at the Public Building Awards in 2018.

The building is made up of three wings: the main hall (3,578 m²), the administration wing (1,394 m²) and the covered entrance wing (622 m²), which links the other two; the total floor area is 5,594 m². The outer walls are bare concrete, cast in formwork of hiba wood from the prefecture, and the rough marks left by the nail heads can be made out. When completed, the exposed concrete had a finish painted with Saran latex. It looks cold at first glance, then its surface proves rich, in tune with the pines, zelkovas and cherry trees around it.

In the main hall, which has 1,343 seats, the ceiling is curved and the asymmetrical side walls are of curved beech plywood, arranged to diffuse sound. In the administration wing, the lobby ceiling is a particular blue that Maekawa was fond of, known as "stratosphere blue". A north window of the lobby void holds the stained-glass work "Blue Time" (青の時間), designed by the painter Nui Sano, who was born in Hirosaki and also painted the glass herself: twenty panels forming a whole 3.5 m high and 6 m wide, made of about 1,000 pieces of German antique glass, with grisaille paint fired in a kiln. Its appearance changes with the light of the seasons.

The main hall's stage curtain, 8 m high and 16 m wide, is woven in Kyoto in Nishijin tapestry weave by Kawashima Selkon Textiles. Titled "On Takaage no hihi tachitachi" (御鷹揚げの妃々達々), it takes up the composition of a work by Shikō Munakata: a pair of hawks at the centre and, on each side, two female figures who, from right to left, stand for spring, summer, autumn and winter in Hirosaki, surrounded by seasonal plants. Munakata specified the colours himself. The weave uses 272 colours of thread, drawn from 30 base colours. After some fifty years the colours had faded, the cloth yellowed and the threads weathered; the firm that had woven it recreated it in its 1964 state, taking the old curtain as its model, with the help of craftsmen who had taken part in the original weaving.

The civic hall is a cultural facility of the city: residents come to see performing arts, carry out their cultural activities, such as cultural festivals, and attend training sessions or meetings in the calm of the park. The renovation added a seven-seat room for parents with young children and a childcare room. A café open to the public, baton, occupies the mezzanine of the administration wing; the stained glass can be seen up close there.

The interior can be seen during performances, and the mezzanine café, open to the public, looks onto the stained glass. Tours of the building are booked in advance by telephone, with a tour authorisation request form to fill in; some dates cannot be granted because of events or maintenance. The hall is closed on the third Monday of each month (the following day if that Monday is a public holiday) and from 29 December to 3 January.

It stands in Hirosaki Park, five minutes on foot from the bus stop in front of the city hall.