Shiga: Cafe to Open in Hall Designed by Architect William Merrell Vories Offers Taste of the Past

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:39 JST, February 15, 2025

OMI-HACHIMAN, Shiga — A cafe will open this month in the Waterhouse Memorial Hall, a structure designed by U.S. architect William Merrell Vories (1880-1964). The cafe in Omi-Hachiman, Shiga Prefecture, will offer dishes related to the American architect, who came to Japan as a Christian missionary.

The memorial hall building was constructed in 1913. Paul Waterhouse, another American who also acted as a missionary with Vories, lived in the house with his family for six years. Currently, the building is used as an accommodation facility.

Items on the cafe’s menu include a roast pork lunch set, sandwiches with cucumber and ham, cake sets and drinks. Most of the dishes were reproduced based on recipes left behind by women of the time, including Kiyono Yoshida, wife of Etsuzo Yoshida, who supported Vories’ missionary service.

Kiyono ran a private school where women learned Western cooking, Western and Japanese sewing and English at a facility near the hall. Recipes developed were carried in a missionary magazine published by Vories.

Kazuyo Kami, 77, a cooking instructor in Omi-Hachiman, knew of the recipes and reproduced the dishes and served them in the memorial hall together with her peers. The cafe is operated by the Omihachiman Machiya Club, an organization which runs the memorial hall as an accommodation facility and succeeded the work of Kami.

The cafe will open on Feb. 18 and 19, March 6, 7, 12, 13, and more dates from April.

“Like the community created by Vories and Etsuzo Yoshida, I hope this cafe can become like a garden where many will gather,” said Toshinori Miyamura, the representative of the organization.