Meiji

A two-story earthen-walled storehouse behind the Miyake family's Meiji-era merchant house on the old Seto Kaido, registered in 2022 for the streetscape it preserves.

In Owariasahi, Aichi, the Miyake family's roofed gate and tiled wall front the old Seto highway, marking an early-Meiji dyeing and brewing estate registered in 2022.

The Miyata Residence well house in Inuyama is a late-Meiji Registered Tangible Cultural Property, a small tiled shelter with a pulley hung from its ridge beam.

The Myojin Sluice Gate in Obu, Aichi, a 1901 registered property, carries a canal beneath a river through twin stone arches built in rare Meiji artificial stone.

At Meiji Mura near Inuyama stands a sentry box from the gate of Tokyo's Akasaka Palace, a National Treasure. Built in 1908, it is a Registered Cultural Property.

Built around 1887 in Kobe, now at Meiji-mura, this registered property pairs a stone-look Western front with a Japanese gabled porch and still serves beef hotpot.

Built in 1909 on the Gakushūin grounds in Tokyo and rebuilt at Meiji Mura in 1964, this registered property links a private Japanese wing to a Western office wing.

Built in 1907, Kanazawa Prison ranged five cell blocks around an octagonal guardhouse so a warder watched every wing. A timber wing survives at Museum Meiji-mura.

Built in 1907 for Kanazawa Prison and rebuilt at Museum Meiji Mura in 1977, this red-brick gate by Yamashita Keijiro survives from the Five Great Meiji Prisons.

An octagonal guardhouse from Kanazawa Prison, one of Meiji's Five Great Prisons. Five cell wings once radiated from this watch point, now preserved at Meiji Mura.

An 1895 earthen storehouse that once brewed sake in Kariya, now at Meiji-mura. Note its drop-away fire boards, torii-shaped roof frame, and registered status.

Built in 1912 to face Kyoto's Nishi Hongan-ji, this wooden police box mimics Western brick in tile. Now at Museum Meiji-mura, its cut corner rewards a close look.

Step onto the Tendō Spectacle Bridge at Meiji-mura, a graceful 1887 stone arch bridge originally built in Yamagata's Tendō. Crafted from local Yamadera stone with a distinctive horizontal deck inspired by Roman aqueducts, it stands as a quiet masterpiece of Meiji-era civil engineering preserved in Aichi's open-air museum.

Tucked into the Japanese Garden of Museum Meiji-mura in Inuyama, Aichi, the Tokyo School for the Blind Porte-cochère is a registered tangible cultural property that preserves the elegantly designed entrance porch of a 1910 Tokyo school building. Three free-standing arches, refined plant and geometric ornament, and half-timber detailing capture the artistic peak of late Meiji school architecture.

Standing on the quiet hilltop of Takabari in Meitō Ward, Nagoya, the Renkyō-ji Bell Tower is a small but exquisite wooden structure built in 1882. Featuring a hip-and-gable tile roof, splayed round columns, a deeply coffered ceiling, and charming turtle carvings on its gables, this Meiji-era treasure was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 2017. Set within the precincts of a temple whose history reaches back over a thousand years, it offers travellers a tranquil encounter with traditional Japanese craftsmanship.

At the south-east corner of Renkei-ji in Agui, Aichi, this east-facing great gate of 1896 rests on unusually dense packed bracketry. Registered nationally in 2013.

Held in the Hosa Library in Nagoya, the Song Edition of the Taiping Shenghui Fang (Kanazawa Bunko Version) is a Southern Song printed copy of the imperial medical encyclopedia originally compiled in 100 volumes by Wang Huaiyin under the command of Emperor Taizong. Designated an Important Cultural Property, it traveled from Hōjō Sanetoki's Kanazawa Bunko through Toyotomi Hidetsugu and Tokugawa Ieyasu to the first Owari lord Tokugawa Yoshinao. The 24 surviving printed booklets, supplemented by 27 Keichō-era manuscript volumes, bear the distinctive 'Kanazawa Bunko' and 'Gohon' seals on every volume, making it a primary witness to East Asian medical history.