Important cultural property

Completed in 1900 and still in use, Kobe's Gohonmatsu Dam was Japan's first gravity concrete water-supply dam, the core of nine Meiji structures listed in 2006.

Discover Hasedera Myokendo, an Important Cultural Property in Tamba Sasayama, Hyogo. This elegant Muromachi-era shrine hall features refined nagare-zukuri architecture and over 600 years of history.

The Former Hunter House, located within the Kobe Oji Zoo in Nada Ward, is the largest surviving foreign residence (ijinkan) in Kobe and a nationally designated Important Cultural Property. Originally built around 1889 and extensively renovated by British industrialist Edward Hazlett Hunter in 1907, this Victorian-era timber-and-brick mansion features a stunning colonnade veranda with diamond-lattice windows, marble mantelpieces, teak floors, and English stained glass.

The Main Hall of Hiide Shrine in Hatayama, Tanto-cho, Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, is a sangensha nagare-zukuri shrine building with a kokera-buki roof dating from the late Muromachi period. Designated as a national Important Cultural Property in 1970, it enshrines Tajimahitaka no Kami, a descendant of the legendary Amenohiboko. With no protective enclosure, the hall offers visitors a direct encounter with medieval shrine architecture, including distinctive funa-hijiki brackets and mitsudo-gumi bracket sets.

Rebuilt in 1626, Hiromine Shrine Worship Hall in Himeji stands eaves to eaves with the eleven-bay sanctuary. Its east bay was dropped and its sides left open.

Designated in 1953, Hiromine Shrine Hokyointo stands on the slope beside the approach in Himeji. Incised moon discs and Sanskrit syllables mark its four faces.

Rebuilt in 1444, Hiromine Shrine Main Hall in Himeji runs eleven bays across, a scale rare in shrine building. Nine holes in its rear wall serve a nine-star rite.

Tucked within the main hall of Sumadera (Fukushō-ji) in Kobe's Suma district is an Important Cultural Property completed in 1368: a three-bay miniature shrine set upon a tiered altar that unusually combines Chinese-style (karayō) and Japanese-style (wayō) architecture in a single composition. Standing near the famed Genpei battlefield of Ichi-no-Tani, this extraordinary early-Muromachi ensemble has been carefully preserved for over six and a half centuries.

The Funayakata, an Important Cultural Property standing beside the pond at Sorakuen Garden in Kobe, is the preserved upper cabin of a river pleasure boat (kawagozafune) once used by the Honda lords of Himeji Domain in the mid-Edo period. Finished in lacquer and gold leaf, it is the sole surviving example of a river-type gozabune cabin in Japan—an irreplaceable window into an aquatic daimyō culture that has vanished everywhere else.

The Furui Family Residence, known as "Sennen-ya" (Thousand-Year House), is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property located in Yasutomi, Himeji City, Hyogo Prefecture. Dating to the late Muromachi period, it is counted among Japan's three great thousand-year houses, featuring bamboo slatted floors, adze-finished timbers, and the legendary fire-quenching Turtle Stone.

Explore the Nagato Province Coin-Casting Artifacts, Important Cultural Properties from Japan's Nara period. These coin molds, crucibles, and bellows nozzles from the Nagato Mint reveal the origins of Wadō Kaichin, Japan's first official currency.

A Kamakura-period scroll at Ichijō-ji in Kasai, Hyōgo, in colour on silk, shows Amida Nyorai. An Important Cultural Property since 1908, it is rarely shown.

A silk scroll at Kōkyūji in Himeji shows Kanakavatsa, second of the Sixteen Arhats. A Nanbokuchō-period work, it has been an Important Cultural Property since 1917.

A Kamakura-period scroll at Tōsen Shrine in Arima near Kobe, this Kumano mandala maps the gods and buddhas of Kumano's three shrines onto silk. Protected since 1904.

A 69.1 cm Kamakura tachi at the Kurokawa Institute, Nishinomiya, signed only 'Ichi' and showing the bright clove temper of Bizen's Yoshioka Ichimonji school.

A signed early-Kamakura tachi by Kanetsugu of Bitchu's Ko-Aoe school, its high curve and crepe-like steel with dark sumihada spots typical of the line.

A late-Kamakura tachi by the Bizen master Kagemitsu at Hyogo's Kurokawa Institute, with an engraved vajra-hilted ritual sword half hidden by later shortening.

Discover 140 exquisite Heian-period bronze mirrors offered to a sacred mountain pond and now preserved at Hyogo's Kurokawa Institute — windows into Japan's ancient water-spirit worship.

Painted in 1890 by Honda Kinkichirō, Hagoromo Tennyo (The Heavenly Maiden in the Legend of Hagoromo) is a Meiji-era oil painting that depicts a celestial maiden soaring above Mt. Fuji and Miho-no-Matsubara. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2024, it is held at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe. This guide introduces the painting's blend of Japanese subject and Western technique, its painter's life, its remarkable journey across the Pacific, and how to visit.

Preserved at Museum Abashiri Prison in Hokkaido, the Former Abashiri Prison Chapel and Administration Building are nationally designated Important Cultural Properties rebuilt in 1912. Their unique Japanese-Western hybrid design tells the story of Meiji-era penal architecture and Hokkaido's pioneer past.