Important cultural property
重 要 文 化 財 一 覧Explore Japan’s Important Cultural Properties in one searchable list. Filter by prefecture, period, and category, read concise stories, and plan visits with maps and travel tips.
A Kansei era townhouse in Uchiko, Ehime, listed with its 1885 rear parlour. Built before the wax boom, its upper floor holds no reception rooms. Exterior only.
The main hall of Oyamazumi Shrine on Omishima, Ehime, built in 1427, is a nagare-zukuri hall at a shrine revered for its god of the sea and its armour collection.
The worship hall of Oyamazumi Shrine on Omishima, Ehime, built in the early Edo period, is a seven-bay hall with a gabled roof of cypress bark before the main hall.
The three stone hokyointo pagodas of Oyamazumi Shrine on Omishima, Ehime, made in the late Kamakura period, stand at the only grand shrine in Shikoku.
A Meiji wax merchant's estate in Uchiko, Ehime. Ten listed buildings keep the cauldron house and bleaching yard beside the living rooms. Open as a wax museum.
A late-Kamakura granite hokyointo at Kamei Hachiman Shrine on Uoshima, Ehime, 238 cm tall with its platform; island lore calls it a medieval warrior's grave.
A Meiji villa on a cliff above the Hiji River in Ozu. Three listed buildings: a thatched house of seven rooms, a retreat cantilevered over the water, a storehouse.
An 1882 wooden schoolhouse in Unomachi, Seiyo, Ehime, built by a local carpenter with arched windows as its light Western touch; now an education museum.
Seven Meiji-period buildings at the Niihama house of Hirose Saihei, who modernised the Besshi copper mine. Designated in 2003 and open inside for 550 yen.
A late 18th-century thatched farmhouse moved from Besshiyama to Kamikuroiwa in 1975. Its rooms sit in a single row with almost no earth floor. Free entry.
A granite hokyointo behind the main hall of Nishiyama Koryuji in Saijo, Ehime: 305 cm tall, of the Nanboku-cho period, and intact from its base to its spire.
The 1375 main hall of Nishiyama Koryuji in Saijo, Ehime: a large hall mixing Japanese and Zen elements, under a hipped roof that looks almost pyramidal.
A pair of uninscribed granite stupas of the late Kamakura period standing on one platform in a Noma rice field, Imabari. Designated in 1954, freely visitable.
A small 1431 Kannon hall at Shounji on Iwagi Island, Ehime: a Zen-style tile-roofed hall with radiating fan rafters and a rare double-lotus altar railing.
A three-bay hall of 1463 with a pyramidal tile roof on Yugeshima, Ehime, noted for rare bracketing and original materials that survive right down to its roof tiles.
Eleven granite pagodas behind Jozenji's main hall in Imabari: 4 gorinto, 5 hokyointo and 2 hoto, three of them dated 1326 or 1357, regathered here in 1704.
Completed in 1484 at temple 49 of the Shikoku pilgrimage in Matsuyama, this 5-bay hipped hall blends wayo and zenshuyo; its shrine bears pilgrim graffiti of 1525.
A three-bay Zen-style hall of about 1483 in the hills of Kihoku, its thatch restored in 1982 after decades under pantiles, with a well-preserved shrine inside.
Taisanji Temple Niomon Gate stands midway up the approach in Matsuyama. Dated 1275 to 1332, it mixes Japanese and Zen-derived carpentry and once had two storeys.
Standing on the small island of Tsurushima off Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, Tsurushima Lighthouse is a Western-style stone lighthouse completed in 1873 to the design of Richard Henry Brunton, the Scottish engineer known as the Father of Japanese Lighthouses. It is one of the very few Meiji-era lighthouses still in active service in essentially its original form, and was designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2024 together with its former keepers' quarters, warehouse and stone walls.