The full title of this building is the Former Higashinakae Elementary - Sugio Branch - Donohara Winter Branch School or 旧東中江小学校杉尾分校渡原冬季分校. It apparently closed in 1972, but it was never torn down. The building has stayed abandoned since then, and the local farmers even repurposed it for storage of their farming equipment.
Now, nature has completely reclaimed the wooden building with trees and vines choking the remains of the structure. The front of the building is surrounded with tall grass, difficult to move through. The entrance to the school is completely shut from vines. The back of the building has tall trees towering over it. Bamboo trees also surround the old school.
From certain angles, it's hard to tell there's even a building back there. Apparently later on in summer, the plants grow so high that you can't even reach it. Right now it's only the beginning of June, and already it's a bit difficult getting to the actual building.
It's a lot easier to move around the back of the building. The tree canopy prevents any of the grass growing. But, the back reveals that the building is in much worse shape.
The south end of the roof has collapsed, probably from the weight of winter snow. As the roof collapsed, it took the second floor, staircase, and back wall with it. Much of the electrical wiring of the building is now exposed.
Looking at the wood work around the building, it seemed like the local farmers adding a bunch of bracing and other wooden beams to keep the building together. But, a lot of the wood looks like it's been chewed through by termites. Even though the nearby fields look like someone has still been using them, no one has seemed to touch this building recently at all.
The school building looks like it had 4 rooms. The main room in the above photo was probably the office. The room leading off to the right was mostly likely the classroom. Then, there was a store room to right in the photo above, about the size of a closet. And lastly, a staircase that went up to another room. I don't know what they would've used that for.
According to folks on the Internet, the building finished construction in 1957, and in 1959, it serviced only 8 students, the children of the people living in this small farming plateau. 10 years later in 1969, there were only 4 students. It apparently closed in 1972.
Going back to the full title of this building, it's the Former Higashinakae Elementary - Sugio Branch - Donohara Winter Branch School 旧東中江小学校杉尾分校渡原冬季分校.
In 1999, Higashinakae Elementary School 平村立東中江小学校 merged with nearby school Shimonashi Elementary School 下梨小学校. Both schools were part of Taira Village 平村 at the time, and the new school was named Taira Elementary School 平小学校. This school used the Shimonashi ES building, so the Higashinakae building was no longer used.
Side tangent, but in 2004, due to depopulation, Toyama (and many other prefectures at the time) restructured many of its outlying villages and municipalities into larger cities. Taira village joined the other south western villages together into Nanto City. In 2006, Taira Elementary was closed, but the building is still used every day as the administrative building for the residents. It also has the post office, a clinic, and a few stores, too.
Anyways, back in the day, many of the schools (especially elementary schools) in remote areas had branch schools. Branch schools were mainly used in winter when traveling was difficult. It was much easier for a teacher or two to travel and stay there for a week, rather than the students of the area traveling to the main school building every day.
The Sugio Branch School 杉尾分校 was in the Sugio neighborhood area further north down the river. The Donohara neighborhood was between Sugio and Higashinakae, and apparently it was too far for those 8 students to go to either school, so the Donohara Winter Branch School 渡原冬季分校 was built.
The tiny area of Donohara is a plataeu above the main road going along the river down to the main Nanto City. Getting to this small area isn't too bad with my Kei car, but I'm not quite sure how a 1950s bus could safely get up here. Maybe they used a smaller bus to navigate the narrow winding road? Or maybe the students just met the bus at the bottom of the hill.
The narrow road leading to Donohara overlooks the Owatari Bridge 大渡橋, which was opened in 1958, only a year after the Winter Branch School was built.
Obviously in summer it's pretty easy to move around, but in winter, I imagine they probably don't even plow this narrow road.
Looking through photos from just a few years ago, I think the damage to the school building is very recent. Maybe it happened this winter? I wonder how much longer until they completely remove the building. Although, it's remote enough that it'll probably stay until it becomes an actual hazard, or someone buys the land.
