Historical landmarkKyoto · JP
Site Commemorating the Birth of Automatic Telephone Exchange in the Kinki Region (Kyoto)
Tucked onto the street-facing wall of a handsome brown-tiled building in central Kyoto, the Site Commemorating the Birth of Automatic Telephone Exchange in the Kinki Region (近畿電気通信局管内自動式電話交換創始ゆかりの地) is a small, easy-to-miss blue metal plaque with an outsized story. It marks the place where, in April 1928, Kyoto became one of the first cities in the western Japan region to switch on automatic telephone dialling—freeing callers from the days when every conversation had to be stitched through by hand at an operator's board. The marker itself is modest and free to view at any hour, but it sits on a genuinely significant building: the Former Kyoto Central Telephone Office, a pioneering work of Japanese modernist architecture now woven into the lively ShinPuhKan complex and Ace Hotel Kyoto. For anyone drawn to design, communications history or the quieter offbeat corners of the city, it makes a satisfying two-minute stop in the Karasuma-Imadegawa neighbourhood.