Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Japan

The Former Wakasaya Inn in Minamiechizen, Fukui, is a late Edo inn in the Imajo post town on the Hokkoku Kaido, with a latticed front and guest rooms upstairs.

The Former Furukawaya Sobei House in Obama, Fukui, a shipping merchant's townhouse of 1865 with street lattices and plastered side walls, is a rare Edo survivor.

A straight 223 m railway tunnel of 1894 in Tsuruga, Fukui, lined in brick behind cut-stone portals and built by local firms with government-supplied materials.

A curving 467 m brick tunnel of about 1895 in Tsuruga, Fukui. Its builders changed several times before Kajima-gumi finished it; dressed stone marks the portals.

Completed in 1893, this straight 87 m tunnel near Tsuruga Station was the first on the old line to Imajo, built by engineer Ota Rokuro wholly in brick, portals too.

A curving 401 m tunnel of about 1895 in Tsuruga, Fukui, with stone walls, a brick arch and refuges every 40 m, likely built by local firms new to railway work.

A short curving 1894 tunnel in Tsuruga, Fukui, with Edo-giri andesite portals and stone-arched refuges, opening the densest run of tunnels on the climb.

A curving 310 m tunnel of about 1895 in Tsuruga, Fukui, a near-twin of its neighbour, with railway-era wiring fittings still fixed at the base of its brick arch.

A 979 m tunnel of 1896 in Tsuruga, Fukui, dug through hard rock and a flood with early compressed-air drills, behind grand portals that once bore Kuroda plaques.

The shortest surviving tunnel on the old line, 64 m and straight, built around 1895 in Tsuruga by local firms; its north portal crest slopes with the hill.

A curving 260 m tunnel of about 1895 in Tsuruga, Fukui, its stone walls under a brick arch neatly laid with government-issued bricks by a local builder.

The longest tunnel on the old line, 1,170 m and dead straight, completed in 1896 near the summit above Tsuruga, lined in brick and dug through hard, wet rock.

A 65 m rockfall shelter of 1953 near Imajo, Fukui, one of the earliest prestressed concrete structures in Japan, with load-shaped columns on the valley side.

The northernmost structure of the old line, a 368 m tunnel of about 1895 near Imajo, Fukui, built by a Morioka firm with local bricks and a grand north portal.

The largest culvert on the old line, built around 1896 in Tsuruga, Fukui: a steep stone-and-brick passage about 20 m below the track that carried a stream.

An 1823 former inn at Itadori on the Hokkoku Kaido in Fukui. Its thatched helmet roof faces the old road, three guest rooms behind an earth floor. Exterior only.

A reinforced-concrete bank of 1919 in Mikuni, Fukui, built for a kitamaebune merchant family. Yamada Shichigoro designed it. Free entry; closed Mondays.

Up four stone steps from the street stands the front gate of the Yamakawa residence in Obama, a three-bay ridged gate with plaster wing walls, about 5.1 metres long.

Rebuilt in 1907 on an older samurai plan, the main house of the Yamakawa residence in Obama joins a formal shikidai entrance to a banker's dignity, poet Tomiko's home.

Beside the path to the main house, the middle gate of the Yamakawa residence opens to the north garden, just 1.5 metres wide, the smallest of five registered structures.

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.