Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan

The Shōrenji Shōtoku Taishi-dō in Matsushiro, Nagano City, is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property rebuilt in 1912 through community donations after a great fire. Its remarkable kotee plaster reliefs of dragons, auspicious beasts, and arabesque motifs showcase masterful traditional plastering techniques, while the hall embodies the deep Jōdo Shinshū devotion to Prince Shōtoku in a castle town steeped in Sanada clan heritage.

Discover Shirahige Shrine Haiden, a Nagano City Designated Cultural Property in the legendary village of Kinasa. Explore its elegant Irimoya architecture, ties to Emperor Tenmu's capital relocation plan, and the tale of the demon-slaying warrior Taira no Koremochi.

Quietly facing Lake Suwa in Nagano, Suwako Hotel Geihinkan is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property completed in 1928 by the Katakura silk dynasty. This wooden two-story villa pairs a Spanish-style exterior with a hybrid interior — Western rooms downstairs, Japanese rooms upstairs — finished with Italian marble and Taiwanese cypress. Discover one of early-Showa Japan's finest private villas, alongside its neighbour Katakura-kan.

Located in Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture, the Seiko Epson Founding Memorial Hall (former Daiwa Kogyo Office) is a wooden two-story building completed in October 1945 as the office of Daiwa Kogyo Limited and registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in February 2023. Built from timber salvaged from local agar warehouses during the postwar shortages, it is valued both as a vivid record of emergency postwar construction and as the birthplace of Japan's modern wristwatch industry. Now open to the public as the Founding Memorial Hall of the Epson Museum Suwa, the building lets visitors experience the spirit of "sincere effort" championed by founder Hisao Yamazaki and trace the journey from this modest office to world-changing innovations such as the first quartz wristwatch and the first compact digital printer.

The largest building at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, a long dozo storehouse with a monitor roof and three gabled dormers, tied to the founding of the house in 1868.

A tiny iron-roofed shed of 8.4 square metres covering the founding-era round well at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, where soft Mt. Tateshina water begins its work.

An L-shaped Taisho-era rice granary at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, extending the front bin and marking a stage in the brewery's growth. Listed as hard to recreate.

The late-Edo reception room of the earlier Takeshige house in Motai, kept at the rebuilding and joined to the present Main House. Listed as a model of its form.

A tall early-Showa storehouse at the north edge of the Takeshige brewery in Motai, built to season the timber for its sake barrels and marking the compound's growth.

A Taisho-era two-storey earthen-wall building on the west edge of the Takeshige brewery in Motai, once the cooperage where sake barrels were made, now used for storage.

An early-Showa rice-polishing house at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, set where waterways meet and once driven by a wheel on the roadside channel to mill the rice.

A dozo storehouse at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, added north of the No. 3 Storehouse and dated by an ink inscription on its ridge beam to March 1922.

A late-Meiji preparation cellar at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, notable for interior posts built up from bolted planks. Listed as hard to recreate.

The 1909 main house of the Takeshige brewery in Motai, with plastered gables and a passage to the cellars behind. Its walled street front is a famed Nakasendo scene.

A Taisho-era brick cistern in English bond at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, divided for household and brewing water and valued as a mark of the brewery's modernisation.

A timber charcoal shed across the road at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, said to reuse part of the old main house moved here in 1909, holding the Nakasendo streetline.

Standing in the Kawagishi district of Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture, the Chuo Printing Company Building (Former Katakura Group Office) is a wood-frame two-story Registered Tangible Cultural Property completed in 1910 as the headquarters of the Katakura Group, the largest silk-reeling enterprise in Japan. Built within the grounds of the Kakigai Silk Reeling Factory — Katakura's birthplace — its dignified facade combines artificial stone pier columns with brick walls, while a Western-style first floor pairs with a Japanese hall above. Selected in the very first round of registrations in 1996, it remains an evocative monument of 'SILK OKAYA.'

Built in 1767 in the castle town of Matsushiro, Chōmyō-ji Hondō is a Pure Land Buddhist main hall registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2014, alongside the temple's sutra repository and main gate. Its richly carved transoms, refined bracket complexes, and elegant frog-leg struts make it a representative late-Edo Jōdo-shū main hall of northern Shinano.

Tsuumo-Imai (Kanehira) Shrine's Kanehira-sha stands in the quiet Kami-Imai district of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, on a site traditionally identified as the residence of the late Heian samurai Imai Shirō Kanehira — foster brother and most loyal retainer of Kiso Yoshinaka, whose tragic death is immortalised in The Tale of the Heike. Built in 1833 (Tenpō 4), this compact single-bay nagare-zukuri honden of just 4.4 square metres concentrates some of the most exuberant Edo-period sculpture in central Japan, with stacked karahafu and chidori-hafu gables, dragon transoms, lion-and-elephant kibana, wave-cut door panels and Seven Sages carvings on the rear wakishōji. It was added to Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Properties list on 31 October 2022, together with the precinct's Tsuumo-sha, Shinmei-sha and Kagura-den.

Discover the Nagano Holy Saviour Church, a registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1898 by Canadian missionary J.G. Waller. This Gothic-style brick chapel near Zenkoji Temple features pointed arches, rose windows, buttresses, and stained glass—a rare architectural gem in Nagano.