Shōwa

A tiny plank granary in Okuma, Fukushima, registered in December 2019. Grooved posts, board walls and a raised floor kept unhulled rice dry through the year.

Rebuilt after the May 1934 Tajima fire by an Echigo master carpenter, this two-storey inn in Minamiaizu, Fukushima keeps a curved karahafu porch. Registered 1999.

Tucked inside a historic high school campus in Iwaki, Fukushima, Sakuragaoka Kaikan is a 1938 wooden library building whose round windows and arched modernist details earned it Registered Tangible Cultural Property status — and gave the school its present name.

Standing in Tochikubo, Kashima Ward of Minamisoma City in Fukushima, the Otani Family Residence Middle Storehouse is a two-story earthen-walled storehouse from the early Showa period, registered as a national cultural property. Together with the East Storehouse and gate, it lines the historic Salt Road that linked the coastal Hamakaido with the inland Oshu-kaido, preserving refined details such as spiral-motif wall bands and namako-kabe checkered walls. Discover how sake, soy sauce, and the trading culture of old Soma shaped this landscape.

The Ōtani Family Residence Gate in Tochikubo, Kashima-ku, Minamisoma, is a nationally registered tangible cultural property. Built in the early Shōwa era in the traditional Kōrai-mon style, this wooden gate stands between two plaster storehouses along the historic Salt Road, preserving the atmosphere of a once-thriving merchant trading hub.

The street frontage of the Sasa Masamune brewery in Kitakata, Fukushima: a yakui-mon gate of about 1927 and a 35-meter wall, spared by the June 2026 fire.

Added in 1932 as retirement quarters for the head of the Sato household in Fukushima City, this annexe holds an eight-mat room with a toko alcove and shoin window.

The Nippon Sei Ko Kai Koriyama St. Peter and St. Paul Church, standing on the Hayama hillside in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture, is a reinforced concrete Gothic chapel completed in 1932. Designed by architect Uebayashi Keikichi, the church features refined buttress detailing, a Norman-style tower, an innovative scissors truss and arched beam roof structure, and stained glass made from Czechoslovakian glass. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2018, it represents the culmination of prewar Anglican church architecture in Japan.

The Hayashi Family Residence in Zaimokucho, Aizu-Wakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture, is a Nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1927. This grand dwelling of over 100 tsubo features rare yellow plaster walls with weatherboard cladding and a prestigious irimoya-style tiled roof with masterfully layered gables, creating an imposing presence. Also designated as Aizu-Wakamatsu Historical Landscape Building No. 18, it stands as a masterpiece of early Showa-period residential architecture.

A gravity concrete sabo dam in Fukushima City combining a 4.4m prefectural dam of 1951 with a 66m by 15m national enlargement of 1954, faced in nuno-zumi coursing.

Built in 1957 high on the Higashi-Karasu River in Fukushima City, this 67m by 12m sabo dam carries its downstream batter unbroken into its wings, faced in tani-zumi.

Completed in 1930, this 176-square-metre earthen brewing hall in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima carries a Western king-post truss that leaves its upper floor free of columns.

The detached parlor of Fukunishi Honten in Aizuwakamatsu, added about 1930, is a refined sukiya-style wing facing the garden, with plain-wood rooms above.