Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Fukui

The Former Kyoto Dento Company Takahama Branch Office in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1931. This elegant two-story wooden building features a symmetrical façade with semicircular arched windows and ornate beige mortar decorations, reflecting the Western-influenced commercial architecture of early Showa-era Japan. Now serving as a community hub, it preserves the legacy of Japan's electrification history on the scenic Wakasa coast.

Built in 1933 at the heart of Tsuruga Port in Fukui Prefecture, these reinforced concrete warehouses showcase International Style architecture with distinctive Spanish tiles and decorative accents that earned them the nickname 'Modern Warehouses.' Registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property, they preserve the legacy of Tsuruga's golden era as Japan's gateway to Europe and Asia.

Discover the Former Nakanata Post Office in Obama, Fukui — a 1936 Western-style wooden building registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property, now revived as the charming community café Kinshiro.

The Former Wakasaya Inn is a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property located in Imajo-juku, a historic post town along the Hokkoku Kaido highway in Minamiechizen, Fukui Prefecture. Built in the late Edo period, this two-story wooden inn features traditional lattice screens and wing fire walls, and was once one of the largest hatago in a town that boasted 55 inns. Now revived as a soba restaurant and community space, it forms a key part of the Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings.

Built in 1865 in the Nishizu district of Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, this Edo-period merchant townhouse was home to Furukawaya Sōbē, a ship captain who served the renowned Furukawa-ya kitamaebune shipping enterprise. Featuring projecting lattice windows, plastered sleeve walls, and a traditional through-passage layout, it is one of the few pre-Meiji townhouses surviving in Obama. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2021, it now operates as the heritage accommodation Nishizu Minato Furukawa.

Built in 1894 near Tsuruga, the First Kannonji Tunnel opens the former Hokuriku Line, its symmetrical andesite portal showing Meiji stonecraft at its most deliberate.

The 310-metre Second Kannonji Tunnel near Tsuruga still holds metal fittings from its railway days at the arch springing, making the vanished line feel suddenly present.

Nearly a kilometre long, the 1896 Habara Tunnel carries one of the grandest portals on the line, with wide parapets and finely built stone-and-brick drainage.

The compact 64-metre Funagaya Tunnel near Tsuruga rewards a close eye: its north portal crown slopes to follow the hillside, over a brick arch laid in stretcher bond.

The 260-metre Magaridani Tunnel near Tsuruga is one link in the chain of bores below the Kinome Pass, built to carry a steep railway over a barrier between two provinces.

At 1,170 metres the brick Yamanaka Tunnel is the longest on the former Hokuriku Line and marked the summit of its crossing, once crowned with a minister's calligraphy.

A modern outlier among Meiji brick tunnels, the 1953 Yamanaka Rock Shed is one of Japan's earliest prestressed-concrete structures, a leap in engineering fifty years on.

Nearest to the old Imajo post town, the 368-metre brick Yunoo Tunnel is the northern gateway of the former Hokuriku Line, with a grand four-pilaster andesite portal.

Hidden some 20 metres below the old trackbed, the Wanayamadani Culvert is the longest on the former Hokuriku Line, its steep brick-and-stone barrel taming 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.

At the northwest corner of the Yamakawa compound stands a two-story earthen storehouse, its plaster walls faced with tall boarding and its windows shut by iron doors.