Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments of Japan

A 916-meter volcanic cone 1,300 km south of Tokyo, this off-limits Ogasawara island shelters the world's only confirmed Matsudaira's storm-petrel breeding colony.

In Fuchu, Tokyo, the Musashi Fuchu Kumano Shrine Kofun is a rare round-top, square-base tomb of the late 7th century, with a free hall recreating its stone chamber.

In 1884 a student unearthed a strange reddish jar from a shell midden in this Tokyo district, Yayoi. The place name went on to label the pottery, then a whole era.

Two 4th-century keyhole tumuli on the Naka River terrace in Tochigi, where Tokugawa Mitsukuni ordered Japan's earliest documented scientific excavation in 1692.

Once topped by a 60-metre pagoda, Shimotsuke Kokubunji was a provincial state temple built in 741. Its eighth-century foundations survive in Tochigi Prefecture.

The site of an ancient temple in Shimotsuke, Tochigi, a Historic Site since 1921, one of Japan's three ordination platforms and the centre of Buddhism in the east.

Tochigi's 8th-10th century Nasu county office, mistaken for a temple until a 1940 bronze seal triggered excavations that uncovered 30+ buildings across four blocks.

Nikko Sannai is the mountain precinct in Tochigi where two shrines and one temple share the slopes. It became a Historic Site in 1998 and World Heritage in 1999.

Japan's only Special Historic Site and Special Natural Monument, this Guinness-record cedar avenue near Nikko was donated to Tōshōgū in 1648 by Matsudaira Masatsuna.

An Early Jomon site in Utsunomiya where 339 grave pits fill a plaza ringed by pit dwellings and timber halls up to 23 meters long, a ground for burial and ceremony.

Designated a Historic Site in 1985, the Omiwa Shrine Grounds center on Mount Miwa, worshipped as sacred with no main sanctuary. Climbs are allowed via Sai Jinja.

Spread across the foothills of Tenri City in Nara Prefecture, the Yamato Tumulus Group is a cluster of 24 ancient mounds dating from the late 3rd to early 4th century—the formative era of the Yamato polity. In 2014, three of its most significant mounds—Nomugi, Nakayama Otsuka, and Shimoikeyama Kofun—were designated a National Historic Site. With its unusual mix of keyhole and square-rear tombs, remarkable finds including special pedestal pottery and a silk-wrapped bronze mirror, and a setting along the ancient Yamanobe-no-michi path, the site offers a rare encounter with the very dawn of the Japanese state.

High in the Omine Range of Nara Prefecture, between Mt. Misen and Mt. Hakkyogatake, lies the native habitat of the Oyamarenge—a rare Japanese magnolia subspecies designated a National Natural Monument in 1928. Each year from late June through mid-July, fragrant white blossoms nicknamed the 'Celestial Maiden Flower' bloom amid primeval forest at nearly 1,800 meters. Reached via a sacred trail that forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage 'Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range,' the habitat unites botanical rarity with deep spiritual heritage.

A pure 9.3-hectare nagi forest on Mount Mikasa behind Kasuga Taisha in Nara, planted as sacred trees a millennium ago. National Natural Monument since 1923.

A 42-hectare Yayoi moated settlement in the Nara Basin whose excavations rewrote Japan's prehistoric chronology, anchored by a 12.5-meter reconstructed pavilion.

Once one of Asuka's four great state temples, this seventh-century site in Nara preserves the rare one-pagoda, twin-hall plan and 28 marble foundation stones.

The Gangoji Gokurakubo Grounds in Nara, a Historic Site since 1965, preserve the site of the Nara-period dormitory. See lecture hall stones and the Futoden.

A late-7th-century round tomb in Asuka with painted Four Symbols, zodiac figures, and East Asia's oldest precise star chart, designated National Treasure in 2019.

In a quiet upland village in eastern Nara lie carved foundation stones of an eighth-century temple that no record names. Its main hall rivaled Tōshōdaiji.

Kengoshizuka Kofun is a seventh-century octagonal mound in Asuka, restored in white stone in 2022 and thought to be the tomb of Empress Saimei and her daughter.