Shōwa

Built in 1927 and registered in 2024, this Amagasaki school gate spans four meters of concrete clad in roughly worked stone, with thin pyramidal caps on its posts.

Registered in August 2025, this 35-square-metre early Showa tea house on the Otemae University campus in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, is said to copy Kyoto's Hanshoan.

Built in 1927 as a social hall for the merchants of Hyogo-no-tsu, the Former Okakata Club is a nationally registered tangible cultural property that miraculously survived both the Kobe air raids of WWII and the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995. This Secessionist-style Western building preserves the memory of Hyogo-no-tsu's prosperity and will reopen as the Kobe City Historical Archives in June 2026.

The Former Maya Kanko Hotel (Mayakan), nestled on the slopes of Mount Maya in Kobe, is an Art Deco reinforced concrete building completed in 1929. Known as the 'Queen of Ruins' for its graceful, curving silhouette enveloped by mountain forest, it became the first ruin in Japan to be registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2021. Discover the fascinating history and architectural beauty of this iconic heritage site.

Discover Former Yamatoya Ryokan, a 1927 wooden three-story inn on Kinosaki's Yu-no-Sato Street. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 2017, it embodies the elegant post-earthquake reconstruction streetscape of Japan's beloved 1,300-year-old hot spring town.

The smallest of five registered structures at a 1930s Nishinomiya villa by Okada Takao: a timber gatehouse of nineteen square metres with a stone-faced side gate.

The First Flying Cage at the Oriental White Stork Conservation and Breeding Center in Toyooka, Hyogo—known as the 'Cage of Promise'—is a Nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property where Japan's captive stork breeding program began in 1965. Discover the inspiring history of this facility and the remarkable success story that has brought over 500 storks back to Japan's skies.

Discover the Kobe Golf Club Clubhouse, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on Mt. Rokko designed by W.M. Vories in 1932. Explore the history of Japan's oldest golf course, its refined Western-style architecture, and the legacy of founder A.H. Groom.

Discover the Kobe University Martial Arts Hall, known as Kanteido. Built in 1935 as a dojo for the former Kobe University of Commerce, this Registered Tangible Cultural Property is the university campus’s only modern Japanese-style building and still serves today’s kendo, judo, and karate students.

Completed in 1932, the Kobe University Main Building (formerly Kobe University of Commerce Main Building) is a Romanesque-inspired reinforced concrete structure designed by the Ministry of Education Architecture Division. Featuring scratch-tile cladding and Lombardy band ornamentation, it was registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2003 and remains in active use as the home of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

Opened in 1963, Kobe Port Tower is the world's first observation tower built with a steel-pipe frame structure. Its graceful hyperboloid form, inspired by the traditional Japanese tsuzumi drum, earned registration as a tangible cultural property in 2014. Following a major 2024 renovation featuring a rooftop deck and rotating café, the tower continues to shine as the iconic symbol of port city Kobe.

Goshobo Shinkan at Arima Onsen in Kobe pairs timber with concrete on a steep slope. Built about 1955 and registered in 2021, its interiors run on a strict grid.

Gosuke Dam on the upper Sumiyoshi River in Kobe stands 30 metres high and 78 metres long. Its hand-laid stone facing earned cultural property status in 2014.

Kobayashiya Ryokan is a historic wooden three-story inn along the Ōtani River in Kinosaki Onsen, Toyooka City, Hyōgo Prefecture. Rebuilt in the early Shōwa era and designated a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2015, it preserves the traditional ryokan layout that supported Kinosaki's communal bathhouse culture. A major 2023 renovation fused its heritage architecture with contemporary design.

Standing along the Otani River in the heart of Kinosaki Onsen, Hyogo Prefecture, Shin Kameya Honkan is a three-story wooden ryokan designed by sukiya master architect Hirata Masaya — the first building he created in this historic hot spring town. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2015 for its elegant chidori-hafu gables, fine lattice windows, and refined tokonoma details, the inn offers guests a rare chance to stay in a living piece of Japanese architectural heritage while enjoying the town's famous seven public bathhouses.

Completed in 1930, the Shinko Trade Building is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property standing in Kobe's historic Shinko waterfront district. With its scratch-tile facade, ship-prow corner curve, and geometric Art Deco stained glass, this early Showa office building remains one of Kobe's finest examples of interwar commercial architecture — still in active use as a tenant building for maritime businesses.

The miso store at Seishikan in Inagawa Town, Hyogo, covers just eleven square metres. Built in 1934 and registered in 2004, it matches the outbuildings beside it.

Located in Nada Ward, Kobe, the Somatani Sabō Dam was completed in 1956 as a gravity concrete erosion-control structure on Mt. Rokko. Featuring an innovative central slit in its spillway, it was registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2014. The dam stands along a popular hiking route to Mt. Maya and tells the story of erosion-control engineering after the devastating 1938 Hanshin flood.

At the property's western edge stands this sukiya-style gate: round-log posts, three-tier framed doors and a cedar-bark roof over wooden shingles, worked with care.

This small plastered storehouse east of the Japanese wing has a honshogawara tile roof and upper eaves sealed in white lime, a quiet record of a Hanshin garden suburb.