Irifuneyama Memorial Museum (Former Kure Naval District Commander's Residence)

The Irifuneyama Memorial Museum (入船山記念館, Irifuneyama Kinenkan) is a museum complex located in Irifuneyama Park (入船山公園) in Kure City, Hiroshima Prefecture, centered on the former official residence of the Commander-in-Chief of the Kure Naval District (呉鎮守府司令長官官舎). Opened as a museum in 1967, the complex preserves one of the most architecturally significant surviving structures from Japan's Meiji-era naval modernization.

The site's history is intertwined with the establishment of Kure as a major naval base. The hill known as Irifuneyama (入船山) originally housed the Kameyama Shrine, which had been located there since 703 CE. In 1886, when the Imperial Japanese Navy selected Kure as the site for a new naval district (鎮守府), the shrine was relocated and the land requisitioned for military use. In 1889, a Western-style two-story wooden building was constructed on the site as a combined Naval Administration Conference Hall and Naval Officers' Club (軍政会議所兼水交社). This structure later became the Commander-in-Chief's official residence.

The original residence was destroyed by the Geiyo Earthquake (芸予地震) of June 2, 1905, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake that struck the Hiroshima-Ehime region. The current building was reconstructed later that same year, partially incorporating salvaged materials from the collapsed structure. The architect was Sakurai Kotaro (櫻井小太郎), a pioneering figure in Meiji-era Western-style architecture who had studied in London. The master carpenter for the Japanese-style wing was Yagi Yasujiro (八木安次郎) from Kyoto.

The building is a single-story wooden structure comprising two distinct sections: an eastern Western-style wing (洋館) and a western Japanese-style wing (和館), connected by a corridor. The Western-style wing, which served as the official reception and administrative area, is the architectural highlight. Its exterior features English half-timber (ハーフティンバー) framing — exposed timber structural members filled with stucco — giving it the appearance of a Victorian English country house. The roof is covered with natural slate tiles arranged in a distinctive fish-scale pattern (魚鱗葺き). The entrance features imported British stained glass panels above and beside the main door. Inside, the walls and ceilings are adorned with kinkarakami (金唐紙), a rare Japanese gold-embossed decorative paper inspired by European gilt leather wall coverings. This material, produced using a complex process of gold-leaf application to handmade washi paper pressed through carved wooden rollers, survives in only a handful of locations across Japan, making the Irifuneyama residence one of the most important examples of this craft.

The Japanese-style wing served as the private living quarters for the commander and his family, featuring traditional tatami rooms, a tokonoma alcove, and a small dry landscape garden (枯山水) with stepping stones and stone lanterns.

From 1889 through the end of World War II in 1945, thirty-two successive Commanders-in-Chief of the Kure Naval District resided in this building. The Kure Naval District was one of the IJN's four major naval districts (along with Yokosuka, Sasebo, and Maizuru), responsible for the defense of the western Seto Inland Sea and overseeing the Kure Naval Arsenal — the Navy's largest and most advanced shipyard, which built the battleship Yamato and numerous other capital ships. The Commander-in-Chief held the rank of Vice Admiral or Admiral and wielded enormous administrative and strategic authority over naval operations in the region.

Also associated with the site is Admiral Togo Heihachiro (東郷平八郎), who served as Chief of Staff of the Kure Naval District from May 1890 to December 1891, long before his legendary victory at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The detached cottage of the house he lived in at Kure has been relocated to the museum grounds.

After Japan's surrender in August 1945, the residence was requisitioned by Allied occupation forces (primarily British Commonwealth Occupation Force units stationed in the Kure area) and used as officers' quarters. In 1956, the Japanese government reclaimed the property, and in 1966 it was transferred to Kure City. The museum opened the following year in 1967.

In 1998, the former Commander-in-Chief's residence was designated a National Important Cultural Property (国指定重要文化財) as a rare surviving example of a Meiji-era naval officer's official residence combining Western and Japanese architectural elements. The site is also part of the Japan Heritage (日本遺産) route 'Naval Stations: Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo, Maizuru — the Trajectory of Modernization through the Navy' (鎮守府 横須賀・呉・佐世保・舞鶴 ～日本近代化の躍動を体感できるまち～).

The museum complex also includes the Kure Local History Museum (郷土館), the Historical and Folk Museum (歴史民俗資料館), a clock tower relocated from the former Kure Naval Arsenal in 1971 that chimes hourly, and a Meiji-era powder magazine (火薬庫) built between 1899-1902 and moved from the Takagarasu Battery, now used to display historical paintings of Kure by local artists. The complex covers approximately 1.2 hectares within the broader Irifuneyama Park.