Shōwa

Explore the historic Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery, featuring 10 Important Cultural Properties from the 1930s. Discover traditional coal-fired distillation, Scottish-style architecture, and the legacy of Masataka Taketsuru, the father of Japanese whisky.

Discover the Koshikawa Bridge, Hokkaido's largest unreinforced concrete railway bridge. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property that stands as a testament to wartime engineering and a poignant memorial to those who built it.

A single-arch reinforced-concrete overpass carrying a footpath over the Hokutan colliery's coal railway at Yubari, its deck tilted to clear larger rolling stock.

A reinforced-concrete viaduct of seven semicircular arches, each spanning six metres, built in 1951 to carry the Takamatsu waste-rock line at the Yubari colliery.

A straight concrete tunnel seventy-three metres long, built in 1951 for the skip cars that hauled waste rock along the Takamatsu line, with portals at each end.

The west portal of the belt-conveyor tunnel on the Takamatsu waste-rock line: a concrete face nearly nine metres wide framing a modest semicircular opening.

Built in 1950, the Hakodate Park Kodomo no Kuni Aerial Ferris Wheel is Japan's oldest operating Ferris wheel, designated as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2019. Standing 10 meters tall with an octagonal wheel and open-air bench-style gondolas, it offers views of the Tsugaru Strait and Mount Hakodate. Experience the nostalgic charm of the Showa era at this beloved retro amusement park within historic Hakodate Park.

The Hakodate YWCA Hall in Shōin-chō, Hakodate, Hokkaido, is a wooden residence built around 1926 in the upscale 'Bunka-mura' (Culture Village) district. Registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2016, it features a distinctive asymmetrical façade with half-timbered green gable decorations and pale pink clapboard walls, crowned by a porch that blends Japanese karahafu curves with Western Doric columns. Still actively used as the Hakodate YWCA headquarters, it offers a café, community programs, and a window into early Showa-era suburban life.

Discover the Hinoki Shinyaku Rusutsu Mountain Lodge, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Hokkaido designed by legendary architect Seiichi Shirai in 1972, featuring distinctive brickwork and sculptural interiors at the foot of Mount Shiribetsu.

Discover Prairie House (Former Sada Residence), a 1928 Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Hakodate's Motomachi district. Designed by Tanoue Yoshiya, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, this Wrightian residence features striking geometric windows and deep horizontal eaves.

By Mankei Pond below Mount Soranuma, this 1928 log lodge was designed by Swiss architect Max Hinder at Prince Chichibu's wish. It sleeps up to thirty in Alpine style.

In Hokkaido University's Tomakomai forest, this 1935 former specimen store joins a buttressed, chapel-like block to a barn-like wing with a gambrel roof and dormers.

In Nibutani, Biratori, the former Munro Residence was the anthropologist's own home and clinic, a three-story mansard-roofed clapboard house, now a research base.