Taishō

Built in 1917 with citizen donations to celebrate Yokohama Port's 50th anniversary, the Yokohama Port Opening Memorial Hall is a masterpiece of Tatsuno-style Free Classic architecture in red brick and granite. Discover its iconic 36-meter 'Jack's Tower,' historic stained glass windows depicting the port's origins, and the remarkable story of its restoration from the Great Kanto Earthquake to the 1989 dome reconstruction.

The Former Main Building of the Convent of the Daughters of Jesus in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, is an elegant Western-style villa built in 1914 as a seaside retreat for Prince Higashifushimi Yorihito. Designed by imperial architect Kigo Kozaburo, the building features distinctive white German-style weatherboard cladding and a commanding tower. As the sole surviving imperial family villa in Hayama and the only pre-Great Kanto Earthquake imperial residence in the Shonan region, it was registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2017.

Built in 1924 for a Fujisawa druggist, this shop-house moved to a farm in 1938 and to Seiganji temple in 2014. Registered in 2017, it now serves as a Buddhist hall.

A 1922 wooden villa above Isshiki beach, Hayama, built by constitution drafter Kaneko Kentaro after the imperial household took his seafront plot. Registered 2021.

A 1912 wooden Western-style villa beside Ōiso Station, registered in 2012 and thought to be Japan's earliest two-by-four house. It now runs as a restaurant.

The Former Kondo Residence in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, is a 1925 seaside villa designed by Endo Arata, Frank Lloyd Wright's most devoted Japanese protégé. Now a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property, this Taisho-era masterpiece blends Wrightian Prairie School horizontality with traditional Japanese living. Saved by a grassroots citizens' movement and relocated to the Fujisawa Civic Hall garden in 1981, it is open to the public free of charge.

Yugyo-ji's Obankata is the formal reception building of the residential quarters. Its large carved irimoya porch served the head priest's departures. Built in 1913.

Reigenkaku in Hase, Kamakura, is a 1918 sukiya villa by Yamamoto Jotaro. Now a registered cultural property, it survived the 1923 earthquake and overlooks Yuigahama.

Seikan-tei is a nationally registered tangible cultural property in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, built around 1906 as the villa of Marquis Kuroda Nagashige. Perched on the Sannomaru outer earthworks of Odawara Castle, this sukiya-style residence offers panoramic views of Sagami Bay and features exquisite painted fusuma doors and wickerwork ceilings. Since 2024, it operates as a Japanese restaurant where visitors can dine within a historic masterpiece.

The largest and latest of the five buildings, added around 1922 by second owner Hara Sankei. Its eastern part is built out over the sloping ground on tall posts.

The oldest of five thatched buildings in Hakone Gora Park, this farmhouse-style tea room by tea master Masuda Don’o has a sunken hearth and old salvaged timber.

The garden’s only non-tea building, a small bathhouse raised over a large natural boulder with a raw log frame, once the rock bath of the former mountain villa.

A grass-hut style tea room west of Hakuun-do, attributed to Ogi Rodo, with a tiny two-mat-plus-daime room and the unusual omission of a crawl-in door.

The waiting pavilion at the head of the garden path, its southeast corner cut away and spanned by a curved log with small rafters fanning into a decorative eave.

Built in 1918 as Baron Fujita Heitaro's villa and registered in 2001, Hakone Kowakien Kihinkan faces east so its glazed main room catches the moon over Myojogatake.

The older half of a Hakone inn at Gora, this late-Taisho timber building is linked to the main house by a corridor over the road. A ten-mat tsuzuki-ma survives.

Moved to the bank of the Sukumogawa in 1987, this low sukiya villa with cedar-bark wainscoting was registered in 2005 and now serves stone-milled soba.

A timber-framed stone storehouse of 1916 in Odawara, dated by an old photograph. Iron bands added after the 1923 earthquake still grip its grey walls, left exposed.

Hirayama Bridge, spanning the Nakatsu River in Aikawa Town, Kanagawa Prefecture, is a curved-chord Pratt truss steel bridge first constructed in 1913. As a rare surviving example of Taisho-era riveted steel bridge construction, it is registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property and recognized as a Heritage of Modern Civil Engineering in Japan. The bridge also bears bullet scars from a 1945 World War II strafing attack, serving as a poignant war memorial.

Founded in 1882, the main building of Fujitaya Ryokan was built in 1923 and is a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property. This two-story wooden inn features exquisite kumiko latticework and openwork-carved transoms, with natural hot spring water flowing from the inn's own private source in Yugawara Onsen.