Built in 1931-32, this Japanese-style church was designed by Hego Fuchino to resemble Kochi Castle in Japan, and houses the congregation of the Makiki Christian Church, founded by Takie Okumura, whom was from Kochi.  The church saw the addition of a matching addition in 1936, also designed by Fuchino, which housed a parish hall and classrooms.  Built of redwood with a steel frame, the five-story church building features an irimoya roof with flared corners, a 90-foot-tall tower, a rustic stone base, layered gabled and hipped roofs, exposed rafter ends, casement and awning windows, clapboard siding, decorative trim at the gable ends, a munekado (gate with side gable roof) at the entrance to the church grounds from Elm Street, a massive fourteen-foot-tall pair of wooden doors, a balcony on the exterior facade of the 1936 addition and a secondary entrance featuring a pair of french doors and a karahafu gable at the Pensacola Street facade, and a corrugated metal roof.  Inside, the building features acid stained concrete floors, a 30-foot-tall vestibule between the sanctuary and 1936 Parish Hall wing that runs the width of the building, columns with elbow brackets, and decorative ceiling panels painted by artist Yunosuke Ogura.  In 1960, a modernist Educational wing was added to the building, which was laid out to include a courtyard between it and the original structure, and an additional munekado gate integrated into the building at the Pensacola Street facade.  The Educational wing features a simplified form of the original Japanese-inspired design of the church with a gabled and hipped roof, large banks of windows, concrete exteiror, and corrugated metal roofing.  The building is one of the most distinctive church structures in the Hawaiian islands, and is one of the best examples of Japanese-style architecture in the United States.
w_lemay
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