Shōwa

Raised in 1938 where a storm surge had breached the Gunchiku sea wall, this three-arch sluice gate was cut in stone at a time when concrete had become standard.

Shin Onsen in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto, a public hot-spring bath of about 1931, has a bandai, a four-square plan of changing rooms and baths and a vaulted steam vent.

The Sagara-mura Furusato-kan in Sagara Village, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a two-storey wooden building originally constructed in 1942 as the office of the former Shiura Village and carefully relocated to its present site beside Sagara Onsen Sayuri in 2000. With its hipped tiled roof and generous bands of windows, it is a rare surviving example of early Showa-era rural Japanese government architecture, registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2007.

Built in 1926 in central Yatsushiro, this timber townhouse carries glazed doors across its full upper frontage, a balustrade, and two twelve-mat rooms behind.

The Takaki Clinic of 1931 in Kikuchi, Kumamoto, a two-storey timber clinic opposite the high school, has a half-timbered front with dormers on a half-hipped roof.

This Lutheran church in central Kumamoto, built in 1950 as a late work of William Merrell Vories, has a pointed tower, hammer-beam trusses and pointed arches.

A brick water tower at Kumamoto's Hamada Shoyu, built around 1950 and still pumping the well water used to make its soy sauce, rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake.

About 8 square meters, the Hamada Shoyu Yokan is a 1930s former tobacco shop with Western detailing, set at a long-running soy sauce brewery in Kumamoto.

A 1933 timber inn entrance on the Kuma River in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto, registered in 2013. See its hip-and-gable porch, courtyard glass doors, and post-flood revival.

The 1933 central building of Hitoyoshi Ryokan, a riverside hot-spring inn in Kumamoto, with four rooms per floor and varied wooden lattice, now registered heritage.

On the Kuma River in southern Kumamoto, this 1953 guest wing of a working inn is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, reopened in 2022 after a major flood.

Registered in 2013, the 1930s East Wing of Kumamoto's Hitoyoshi Ryokan keeps a fan-shaped alcove window and fine-timber rooms, rebuilt after the 2020 flood.

The Fujisaki Family Residence (Sekishokan) Basket Shed in Tanoura, Kumamoto, is a long early Showa-era shed for baskets and firewood whose wall doubles as a fence.

The Yano Family Residence (Shintaku) Main House in Nishihara, Kumamoto, was built in 1929 by a village head of the Yano branch family, with a formal zashiki.

An early Showa wall on the west edge of the Yoshimura compound in Kawashiri, Kumamoto: concrete posts, mortared slag-brick panels and a cap of peaked tiles.

A 1938 wing of Kinparo Ryokan at Hinagu Onsen: an 80-mat upstairs hall with a woven boat-bottom ceiling and natural-timber alcoves, plus a 15 m brick chimney.

The early Showa gate and wall of Kinparo Ryokan at Hinagu Onsen: a 2.3 m roofed gate with slatted transom and a 26 m tiled wall of boards and clay, registered 2009.