Registered Tangible Cultural Properties of Hyogo

Tucked into the mountains of Tako, Hyogo, Yoryuji Main Hall is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1751. This Tendai temple, traditionally founded in the seventh century by Hodo Sennin, preserves a remarkable group of Heian-period Buddhist sculptures and over 1,300 years of devotional history centered on the legendary Willow Kannon.

Ryotei Bunshiro Kyukan is a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property in the historic castle town of Miki City, Hyogo Prefecture. This pre-war culinary ryokan features a stately shoin-style banquet hall and individually designed guest rooms showcasing sukiya and soan aesthetics, with remarkable ceiling craftsmanship including umbrella and wickerwork designs.

Ryotei Bunshiro Shinkan is an early Showa-period tatami room building located in the former castle town of Miki City, Hyogo Prefecture. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property, it features five guest rooms with distinctive sukiya-style designs including umbrella and woven bamboo-strip ceilings, preserving the refined atmosphere of pre-war Japanese cuisine-focused inns.

The Main Hall of Renjoji Temple in Kinosaki Onsen, Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, is a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple hall originally built in 1933 as the Oomoto religious movement's Kakumeiden hall. Relocated and adapted in 1936, it features a King Post Truss roof structure, an asymmetrical worship porch, and a distinctive cusped window, earning its registration as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017.

The Roy Smith House Garage, formerly the garage of the Otani Family Residence, stands at the northeast corner of a Spanish-style estate on the southern slopes of Mount Rokko in Nada Ward, Kobe. Built around 1935 as part of a trade merchant’s villa designed by architect Shimizu Eiji, this two-story wooden structure with a ground-floor garage and an upstairs chauffeur’s waiting room was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2011. The property is now owned by the Kobe University Rokkodai Fund. It is not open to the public, but visitors can appreciate the garage, the main house, and the long stone perimeter wall from the street outside.

The Roy Smith House Main Building in Kobe's Nada Ward is a refined two-story wooden Spanish-style mansion designed by Shimizu Eiji and completed in 1935 as the residence of trader Otani Shigeru. In 1960 it was purchased by the former students of Professor Roy Smith, an American educator who taught at Kobe University for more than half a century, and gifted to him in gratitude. Today it is a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property, prized as a rare example of the Hanshin-kan modern movement nestled in a quiet hillside neighborhood at the foot of Mount Rokko.

A registered Tangible Cultural Property in Nada, Kobe. Built around 1935 as part of a grand estate designed by Eiji Shimizu for a Kobe trading merchant and later dedicated to American professor Roy Smith, the granite-faced gate pillars and a 111-meter Mikage stone wall embody early-Showa elite residential culture.

A remarkably intact 1934 summer villa on Mount Rokko above Kobe, designed by the renowned Vories Architects firm. This single-story wooden retreat preserves original features including a twenty-mat living room, adze-finished beams, and a stone fireplace. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property, it opens to the public on weekends from April to November.

Built in 1932 as a soy sauce company head office in Tatsuno, this timber building wears tile and stone to read as brick. Since 1979 it has shown 2,400 brewing tools.

A late Edo earthen-walled storehouse in Tamba-Sasayama, deeper than it is wide, with raked beams on two free-standing posts. Registered in 2007 with its well.

An early Meiji work building behind the shop in Tamba-Sasayama, registered 2007. Its tall timber frame and south dormer gave the even light bean sorting needed.

A late Edo merchant house in Tamba-Sasayama, registered 2007. The 15-metre front carries plastered eaves and tile drip courses; its earthen floor is now a shop.

Discover the Former Tsujikawa Post Office in Fukusaki, Hyogo — a 1923 wooden pseudo-Western building with charming postal-mark decorations, now home to a yokai-themed book cafe and boutique inn near the childhood home of folklorist Yanagita Kunio.

A village of oil lamps financed this brick hydroelectric plant in 1922. It stopped in 1963, then dinosaur fossils found in the river below revived it as a museum.

A 1950 doctor's surgery built beside a headman's house in Fukusaki, Hyogo. Waiting room west, operating room north-east, a glazed front east. Shops occupy it now.

A small 1933 timber house on the steep slope below Suwayama Park in Kobe, registered in 2006 for its part in the hillside landscape. Private and closed to visitors.

A weatherboarded Western house of 1918 at the eastern edge of Kobe's Kitano preservation district, registered in 1999. Still lived in and closed to visitors.

Designed by Takeda Goichi in 1930 for a teacher of flower arrangement, this Ashiya house puts a tea room and a fireplace under one Spanish tile roof. Closed.

No crawl entrance, only a high kijinguchi: this small Nishinomiya tea house follows the Fumai school of Matsue, a lineage rarely built in the Kansai region.

Tea-house scholar Okada Takao designed this 331-square-metre Nishinomiya house, which pivots from Spanish tile to tatami. Registered property, open by booking.