The Roy Smith HouseTop left: Professor Emeritus Smith at a ceremony to mark 50 years of continuous employment at Kobe University.Top right: The entrance hall.Middle: The front of the house.Bottom: The stained glass windows look out onto the Japanese-style garden.KOBE INSIGHTSCover photo for Kobe University Magazine “Kaze” Issue 10: The Research Center for Advanced Membrane and Film Technology on Rokko-dai 2nd Campus.01The Roy Smith House is situated about 1.3km to the west of the Administrative Oces of Kobe University. It is located in a hilly, quiet residential area of Kobe up near the mountains. It was built in 1935 as the residence of the trader OTANI Shigeru. It is a two-storey house with a Spanish-style tiled roof and a light, contemporary interior. SHIMIZU Eiji, the architect in charge of the house’s design, is known for other buildings in the Kobe area such as Mikage Public Hall and Kōnanzuke Shiryōkan (Former Takashima Residence). From the outside, it has a western appearance with half-timbering and triple windows. Inside it features stained glass with nautical motifs, such as ships with sails, which reect its location in the international port city of Kobe. On the south side of the house is a beautiful Japanese-style garden. After World War II, the house was used as the Canadian Academy’s girls’ dormitory before becoming the home of Roy Smith, an invited professor at Kobe University, in 1960. It is currently the oce of the Kobe University Rokkodai Foundation. The house became a registered tangible cultural property in October 2011.Roy Smith, whom the house is named after, was born in Illinois, USA in June 1878. He attained a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) from the University of Illinois, a M. C. S. (Master of Commercial Science) from New York University, and a M. Ph. (Master of Philosophy) from The University of Chicago. In 1909 at the age of 31, he took up a position at Kobe Higher Commercial School (now Kobe University). Although he returned to America for a brief period during the Pacic War, he taught at Kobe University until 1968 when he was 89, becoming the rst non-Japanese Professor Emeritus at the university. His teaching career at Kobe University spanned over half a century and he remains the longest serving professor in the university’s history. In 1960, many of Professor Smith’s former students banded together to buy the former Otani Residence and held a naming ceremony and party on November 21 of that year on which the house was given its current name: ‘The Roy Smith House’. Professor Smith lived in the house for his last 8 years in Japan before he retired and went back to America, where he passed away in June 1969. Even today, you can see evidence of the fondness and regard that Kobe University students had for Professor Emeritus Smith. The bust of Professor Smith that can be found in the garden in front of the Rokkodai Main Building and the large mural by NAKAYAMA Masami in the Library for Social Sciences were funded by donations from Professor Smith’s former students. (The original Japanese version of this article was written by NOMURA Rieko, deputy head of the Kobe University Archives.)The Roy Smith House is located at: Shinohara Kitamachi 4-11-5Nada, Kobe, Japan.
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