Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan

Tucked into a quiet ravine along the Koyabu River in Ozu City, Ehime Prefecture, Koyabu Onsen Honkan is a rare three-story wooden hot spring inn from the Taisho era. Designated a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2000, this irimoya-roofed tower-style ryokan is still a working inn, offering silky alkaline waters renowned as a beautifying bath and a vivid glimpse of Japan's traditional toji-ba bathing culture.

Quietly standing within the precincts of Chōraku-ji Temple in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture, the Kagiya Kana Shōkōdō (Kagiya Kana Memorial Hall) was built in 1929 to honor the achievements of Kagiya Kana, a woman who created Iyo-kasuri, one of Japan's three great kasuri textiles. Designed by the renowned architect Kigo Shichirō, who also created the famous Bansui-sō and the Ehime Prefectural Government Main Building, this distinctive reinforced-concrete octagonal hall is supported by eight entasis columns and traditional bracket sets, beautifully fusing Eastern and Western architectural sensibilities. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2001.

Built in 1917 on the western shore of Yuge Island in Kamijima Town, Ehime Prefecture, this two-story wooden home is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan. With its iri-moya tiled roof and tsushi-nikai second floor, it inherits the architectural traditions of folk dwellings of the Seto Inland Sea islands. Together with the property's storehouse and gate, it preserves the historic streetscape of an island port town.

Discover the Kami-Yuge Tasaka Family Residence Storehouse on Yuge Island, Ehime—a 1917 dozō-style earthen-walled warehouse and Registered Tangible Cultural Property that preserves the traditional townhouse landscape of a Seto Inland Sea port settlement.

Built in 1917 in the port settlement of Kami-Yuge on Yuge Island in the Seto Inland Sea, this gabled tile-roofed gate and earthen wall preserve the streetscape of an early 20th-century island town. Together with the residence's main house and storehouse, they were registered as Tangible Cultural Properties in 2019.

Kihoku Town Hall in Ehime Prefecture is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property completed in 1958 as the original Hiromi Town Hall, designed by the office of Czech-born architect Antonin Raymond. Its third-floor council chamber features a then-cutting-edge hyperbolic paraboloid shell roof, and circular glass blocks scatter colored light across the interior. A meticulously faithful renovation has earned it multiple national architectural awards, and it is now celebrated as a hidden gem of postwar Japanese modernism.

Built in 1935 for a Sumitomo Chemical manager in Niihama, this registered house splits guest and family space with a central tatami corridor. Free Sunday tours.

Completed in 1959, this auditor's house is the only postwar building among Niihama's six registered Sumitomo residences. Exterior viewing only at present.

At 295 square meters, this 1935 executive house is the largest of Niihama's six registered Sumitomo residences, clad in vertical boards and white plaster.

The 1937 reception annex of the Besshi mine director's residence greets guests under two stacked entrance roofs and a Western drawing room. Free Sunday tours.

The 1937 main house of the Besshi mine director's residence pairs a zigzag corridor with garden-facing tatami rooms. Niihama's grandest company home survives.

This eight-mat tea room of 1937 sets its alcove post atop a 2.7-meter cabinet with a glowing shoji above, a free-spirited detail. Open Sunday mornings, free.

The Former Ninomiya Sawmill Office and Main House in Oda, Uchiko Town, Ehime Prefecture, is a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property that preserves the forestry heritage of one of Shikoku's most densely forested mountain communities. This combined office-residence tells the story of the timber industry that sustained the Oda district for generations.

Discover the Former Hadeba Hydroelectric Power Station in Niihama, Ehime — a registered tangible cultural property built in 1912 with German-made generators, featuring the Orient's greatest water drop of 597 meters. Free admission, open since 2023.

Discover the Former Hiraiso Submarine Cable Landing Station, a registered tangible cultural property in Ikata, Ehime. Built in 1927, this reinforced concrete structure once linked Shikoku and Kyushu via undersea telegraph cables across the Iyo-nada Sea.

Standing atop Mt. Shoji in Niihama, Ehime, the Former Yamane Smelter Chimney is a 19-meter Meiji-era brick chimney built in 1888 and registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2009. Discover its history, the Besshi Copper Mine, and how to visit "Entotsu-yama."

Kokon-so, a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Shikokuchuo City, Ehime Prefecture, is a refined wooden residence originally built around the end of the Meiji era as a secondary villa of an old family in former Kawanoe Village, then carefully relocated to its current site in Kamibun-cho during the late 1950s to mid-1960s. Its three formal rooms aligned in a row and its distinctive budo-dana (grape trellis) ceiling above the gallery corridor exemplify the high craftsmanship of late Meiji Japanese residential architecture.

Set on the grounds of the former Saijo domain headquarters in Ehime Prefecture, the Saijo Eiko Church Pastor's House is a two-story wooden building designed in 1951 by Urabe Shizutaro, one of the most influential architects of postwar Japan. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2021 together with the adjoining sanctuary and kindergarten, the building blends white plaster walls, cedar plank cladding, exposed timber framing, and lattice and shoji screens in a quietly confident folk-craft idiom—an early masterwork that anticipates Urabe's celebrated Kurashiki cityscape.

Standing within the former Saijo Domain Jinya district in Ehime, the chapel of Saijo Eiko Church is one of the earliest completed works of postwar Japanese architect Urabe Shizutaro. White plaster walls and a rhythm of slender vertical windows give the building a quietly modernist character, blended with Japanese folk-craft sensibility and the spirit of Christian worship. It was registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2021.

Standing along the moat of the former Saijo Jinya in Ehime Prefecture, the Saijo Eiko Kindergarten Building is a single-storey wooden structure designed in 1953 by the celebrated architect Shizutaro Urabe. Together with the adjacent church chapel and pastor's residence, it was registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in February 2021. Discover this rare ensemble of postwar wooden modernism on a quiet walk along the moat.

The complete kokuhō catalogue — browse by prefecture, period, and category.

Nationwide jūyō bunkazai — architecture, sculpture, painting, crafts, and documents.

UNESCO-inscribed cultural and natural sites across the archipelago.