Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan

The shortest of the nine Akatan Sabo dams in Minamiechizen, Fukui: a Meiji-era dry-stone dam 6.0 m long on bare bedrock that steadied the stream so forest returned.

A Meiji-era dry-stone check dam at the head of the Akatan Sabo system in Minamiechizen, Fukui: 20 m long, 7.5 m high, with a slack-rope crest below a debris mass.

A small Meiji-era dry-stone dam on the upper Akatani River in Minamiechizen, Fukui, joined to a stepped 60 m stone channel that eases the bed. Registered in 2004.

The tallest of the Akatan Sabo stone dams in Minamiechizen, Fukui: a Meiji-era dry-stone wall 8.0 m high with a paved spillway and a 21 m wall at a right angle.

The lowest Akatan Sabo dam in Minamiechizen, Fukui: a Meiji-era earth dam 72 m long with a 68 m stone wall, rice paddies on its trapped silt and cedars on its face.

The largest of the nine Akatan Sabo dams in Minamiechizen, Fukui: a Meiji-era earth dam 112 m long and 11 m high, with a dry-stone foot and a 30 m stone wall.

A Meiji-era dry-stone check dam in Minamiechizen, Fukui, 27 m long and 7.0 m high, with giant stones in a turtle-shell pattern and a 24 m wall at a right angle.

Attached to the Ishida main house, this late-Meiji storehouse was framed from reused sake-brewery timber and fitted with a twelve-mat tatami parlor below. Exterior only.

The Ishida Residence main house on Fukui's Echizen coast is a late-Edo timber home under russet Echizen tile, built by a family of village headmen. Exterior view only.

This early-Meiji long gatehouse fronts the Ishida compound and is said to have been moved from a Fukui samurai residence, its gate under a tiled roof. Exterior only.

The oldest Ishida storehouse, this late-Edo building has a miso lean-to whose east wall is namako-kabe, a grid of black tile and white plaster. Exterior only.

This early-Meiji storehouse on the Ishida compound carries local blue-green Shakudani stone along its roof ridge, with a sheltered forecourt on the east. Exterior only.

The Inoue Dental Clinic in Echizen, Fukui, built in 1908 after a great fire, is a storehouse-style building with Tuscan pilasters and pediments in plaster.

Built in 1868, the Main House of the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui heads a registered papermaking compound whose kumohada-mashi served Yokoyama Taikan.

The smallest registered building at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, this 1956 shed made the wooden crates that carried fine paper to painters nationwide.

Kogura, a 1949 two-story plaster dozo at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, once dried the oversized handmade sheets the mill is celebrated for.

The largest building at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, this late-Taisho hall is where sheets are formed by nagashi-zuki and then pressed of water.

A late-Taisho earthen-walled storehouse at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, built to guard fine paper from fire and damp, with a formal room upstairs.

The 1952 Fiber-Boiling House at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, is where kozo, mitsumata, gampi and hemp are boiled and cleaned to begin papermaking.

The 1953 Stretching and Drying Hall at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui dried pressed sheets on boards under a wide truss-spanned room, the final step.