Edo

Kojindo is a historic Buddhist hall in Matsushiro, Nagano City, believed to predate the construction of Kaizu Castle during the Sengoku period. This late Edo-period structure features an irimoya-style roof, intricate carvings of lions, elephants, dragons, and chrysanthemums, and a polychrome miniature shrine in its innermost sanctuary. It was registered as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2006.

Built about 1800 as a rice store for Nagano's Sakai Meijō brewery, this earthen storehouse later gave up poet Kaya Shirao's papers and now holds his memorial hall.

This late-Edo earthen storehouse at the Sakai Meijō brewery in Nagano held the malt room and steaming hearth for sake brewing. Registered in 2003, it is open to visitors.

In the old post town of Shimo-Togura, Nagano, the thatched Sakai Meijo house was rebuilt after the 1760 fire. It now holds a soba restaurant and a free sake museum.

A late-Edo document storehouse at the Sakai Meijo sake brewery near Togura, its eaves and rafters carefully plastered. The brewery is open as a museum.

The Sakai Meijo Horeki-gura in Chikuma, Nagano, is the oldest brewing storehouse of an old sake house on the Hokkoku Kaido, a late-Edo building registered in 2003.

In Kamishiojiri, once Japan's top silkworm-egg village, an Edo-period farmhouse that grew with the trade—its twin monitor roofs mark the craft within.

On a stone wall in Saku, Nagano, this late Edo storehouse gave up a ground-floor corner to a well house and carries its pantile roof clear above the earthen shell.

Discover Sango-so, a nationally registered cultural property in Karuizawa — a majestic Edo-period thatched farmhouse relocated from Yamanashi in 1935. Explore its rare architecture, imperial history, and adjacent art museum on a cool highland retreat.

Discover the Sanmon Gate of Shōrenji Temple in Matsushiro, Nagano — a Registered Tangible Cultural Property featuring castle-origin shachihoko ornaments, set within a historic temple district tied to Shinran Shōnin and the Sanada clan.

The largest building at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, a long dozo storehouse with a monitor roof and three gabled dormers, tied to the founding of the house in 1868.

The late-Edo reception room of the earlier Takeshige house in Motai, kept at the rebuilding and joined to the present Main House. Listed as a model of its form.

A timber charcoal shed across the road at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, said to reuse part of the old main house moved here in 1909, holding the Nakasendo streetline.

Built in 1767 in the castle town of Matsushiro, Chōmyō-ji Hondō is a Pure Land Buddhist main hall registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2014, alongside the temple's sutra repository and main gate. Its richly carved transoms, refined bracket complexes, and elegant frog-leg struts make it a representative late-Edo Jōdo-shū main hall of northern Shinano.

Tsuumo-Imai (Kanehira) Shrine's Kanehira-sha stands in the quiet Kami-Imai district of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, on a site traditionally identified as the residence of the late Heian samurai Imai Shirō Kanehira — foster brother and most loyal retainer of Kiso Yoshinaka, whose tragic death is immortalised in The Tale of the Heike. Built in 1833 (Tenpō 4), this compact single-bay nagare-zukuri honden of just 4.4 square metres concentrates some of the most exuberant Edo-period sculpture in central Japan, with stacked karahafu and chidori-hafu gables, dragon transoms, lion-and-elephant kibana, wave-cut door panels and Seven Sages carvings on the rear wakishōji. It was added to Japan's Registered Tangible Cultural Properties list on 31 October 2022, together with the precinct's Tsuumo-sha, Shinmei-sha and Kagura-den.

Near the center of the Nagano Meijo brewery in Chikuma, this late-Edo storehouse ages sake kasu, the lees left after pressing. Part of a junmai brewery founded in 1689.

West of the main hall at Nagano Meijo in Chikuma, this late-Edo storehouse held brown and polished rice. Old maps show a waterwheel mill once milled grain here.

At the core of Nagano Meijo in Chikuma, this two-storey earthen hall is where rice is washed, mashed and pressed, with koji rooms and a sake shrine on the floor above.

East of the main hall at Nagano Meijo in Chikuma, this late-Edo cellar uses raised-beam framing to form one tall room where tanks of finished sake rest and mature.

At the north edge of Nagano Meijo in Chikuma, this late-Edo gate opens onto the Hokkoku Nishiwaki highway. One half is the gateway, the other a former gatekeeper's room.