Shōwa

Saikai Bridge, spanning the Inoura Strait in Nagasaki Prefecture, is Japan's first strait-crossing bridge, completed in 1955. At the time, it was the third-longest fixed arch bridge in the world and was celebrated as the greatest in Asia. Built with outstanding design and construction techniques during post-war material shortages, it was designated as a national Important Cultural Property in 2020 — the first post-war bridge to receive this honor. The bridge is also a popular tourist destination for viewing dramatic whirlpools and cherry blossoms.

Two tiers of diagonally set basalt run 218 metres along this Hirado hillside, coursed and hexagonal stonework flanking two stairways of Aō stone. Registered 2008.

A 1939 timber house in a Tabira valley, Hirado, layering three roof forms over 317 square metres, its main reception room in the southeast corner. Registered 2008.

Imazato Shuzo Araiba housed the rice-washing stage of brewing. Its king post truss roof, ridge ventilator and testing room mark an early Showa modernisation.

Imazato Shuzo Shingura is the largest building at a Hasami sake brewery founded in 1772: 491 square metres, with the only hipped roof among its gabled neighbours.

Located in the highlands of Unzen, Nagasaki Prefecture, the Unzen Kanko Hotel opened on October 10, 1935 as one of fifteen "national policy hotels" built across pre-war Japan to welcome foreign visitors. Designed and constructed by Takenaka Corporation, this Swiss chalet–style building of wood and partial reinforced concrete fuses Western and Japanese design idioms, and was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2003. Each of its three stories employs a different facing — local lava stone, half-logs, and half-timber — and as one of only nine members of the Japan Classic Hotel Association, it remains a living monument of early Showa-era hospitality at the heart of Japan's first national park.

Kanchōbashi is a 1954 Pony Warren truss steel bridge spanning the narrowest point of the Haiki Strait in Sasebo, Nagasaki. Standing at the site of Shionome, one of the celebrated Hirado Eight Scenic Views, visitors can witness powerful tidal currents rushing beneath the bridge. Fabricated at Mitsubishi's Nagasaki Shipyard and installed using an innovative tidal erection method, it was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

Four courses of two-meter blocks with recessed edges, running twelve meters along a koi-filled spring channel in Shimabara. Registered in 2014, viewable any hour.

Built around 1935 in Shimabara's Shinmachi district, this 158-square-meter timber house turns its guest rooms toward a spring-fed garden. Registered in 2014.

A brick wall rising straight from the side masonry of a spring channel in Shimabara, thirty meters long and barely one brick thick, braced by piers every 2.4 meters.

The garden pavilion of the Tsutsumiuchi Residence in Shimabara, Nagasaki, is a thatched retreat of about 1933, its veranda turned toward the Ariake Sea. Not open.

Discover Magome Church (Church of Archangel Michael), a striking white Gothic church on Iojima Island in Nagasaki. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1931 by Hidden Christian descendants, featuring rib-vault ceilings and ocean views.