Meiji

Kurasaki Lighthouse, standing on the southern tip of Oshima Island off Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, is Japan's oldest surviving unreinforced concrete lighthouse, completed in 1884. Designed by pioneering Japanese engineer Fujikura Kentatsu, it was designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2024. Discover its distinctive dodecagonal tower, dramatic clifftop setting, and the adventure of reaching this remote island beacon.

A 64-meter cut-stone wall marking Ioshi Shrine's sacred precinct in Obi, built in early Meiji using precision kenchi-zumi masonry of locally quarried Obi welded tuff stone.

The Iotoshi Shrine Kagura Hall and Worship Hall in Nichinan, Miyazaki, is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1876 on the former site of the Itō clan's mortuary temple. Featuring refined Meiji-era wooden architecture and a backdrop of triple stone bridges in the registered Hōonji garden, it is a hidden gem on the edge of historic Obi castle town.

Built in 1876 on the former site of Hōon-ji Temple, the Itō clan's family temple, Iose Shrine Main Hall in Nichinan City, Miyazaki, is a three-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuary registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2010. With its restrained Meiji-era architecture, the rare three-tiered stone bridges of the old temple garden, and the Itō family graves at the rear, this quiet shrine on the edge of the Obi castle town offers a layered window into samurai-era and modern Japanese history.

Discover Kurokita Power Station in Miyazaki, the oldest operating hydroelectric plant in Kyushu. Built in 1907 with German-made machinery, this Registered Tangible Cultural Property features elegant Meiji-era stone architecture and still generates electricity today.

The No. 1 Storehouse anchors Furusawa Brewery, founded in Miyazaki in 1892. Within its thick earthen walls, shochu mash ferments in ceramic jars kept cool without burial.

At the heart of Furusawa Brewery sits the kōji room, its board walls packed with rice husks. Since 1892, hand-made kōji has begun each batch of shochu here.

Furusawa Brewery's small late-Meiji No. 2 Storehouse pairs with the larger No. 1 hall on the north edge of the yard, fermenting Yaezakura shochu behind thick clay walls.

On Hososhima's commercial wharf in Miyazaki, a six-square-metre brick hut built in 1893 by the Imperial Japanese Army's Land Survey Department still records Pacific tides — the oldest working tide gauge in Japan, designated a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2018.

Miyazaki Shrine's Stone Fence, built in 1907, runs some 235 meters of cast artificial stone around the sanctuary to the Funatsuka tumulus, an early concrete boundary.

Miyazaki Shrine's Goryoya, built in 1907, stands east of the heiden and, with its twin hall to the west, forms the symmetrical facade Ito Chuta designed here.

Miyazaki Shrine's Shinsenjo, built in 1907, stands west of the heiden and holds the shrine's sacred food offerings. It is registered as a fine example of its type.

Miyazaki Shrine's Shinden, built in 1907, faces south before the Funatsuka burial mound. Its plain, Ise-influenced form earned a rare listing as a model of design.