About This Site

Explore Japan's Cultural Heritage is a database of Japan's designated cultural properties: National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties, Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, natural monuments, intangible folk cultural properties, and related categories found across all 47 prefectures. Each property has its own article covering what it is, when it dates from, why it was designated, what to look for, and how to plan a visit. Alongside the database, we publish travel pieces on the places, food, festivals, and inns connected to these sites.

Articles are written in both English and Japanese so that the material is useful to readers in Japan and to visitors from abroad.

Why This Site Exists

Japan's cultural properties are looked after by a wide range of custodians: temples, shrines, museums, local governments, and private owners. Much of the official information sits in government databases and on institutional websites, written in technical language that can be hard to follow for first-time readers and for anyone who does not read Japanese.

Our role is to research those primary sources, add the context a visitor needs, and rewrite the material so it reads clearly. We aim to state plainly what a property is, when and where it stands, and why it matters, then add the practical details that help if you decide to go.

Editorial Policy

To keep our articles reliable, we follow a set of working rules.

• Facts such as designation year, count, dimensions, location, and ownership are checked against more than one reliable source before they are published.
• For primary sources we give priority to the Agency for Cultural Affairs databases and to official information from the temples, shrines, museums, and local authorities that hold each property.
• Where sources disagree, we defer to the Agency for Cultural Affairs and flag the discrepancy in the text rather than resolving it silently.
• Claims we cannot verify are not stated as fact; uncertainty is expressed in proportion to the evidence, and unsupported information is left out.
• We do not copy text from other sites. Anything we draw on is rewritten in our own words.
• Opening hours and access details change, so we ask readers to confirm current information with the official source before visiting.

The sources consulted for each article are listed under "References" at the foot of the page.

Sources We Rely On

Information about cultural properties is verified mainly against the following public databases and official channels.

• Cultural Heritage Online (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
• Database of National Cultural Properties (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
• e-Museum (National Institutes for Cultural Heritage)
• Official websites of the temples, shrines, museums, and facilities that own the properties
• Cultural property pages of prefectural and municipal boards of education

How Articles Are Produced

Database articles are researched and written from the primary sources above, and before publication we use AI to proofread them for typos and numerical errors. Travel, food, and festival pieces are written from the viewpoint of contributors familiar with each subject. If you find an error or something that needs updating, please let us know through the contact page so we can correct it.

Contact

For corrections, coverage and listing enquiries, or any other questions, please reach us through the contact page.