Shōwa

The Sakata family's timber new storehouse in Gosen, Niigata. Exposed close-set pillars and a black-plaster dado mark an unusually careful early-Showa kura.

A compost and livestock shed at the Sakata grounds in Gosen, Niigata. Rough walls and an exposed frame make this rare working building part of a wealthy farmstead.

An earthen-walled storehouse on the Sakata grounds in Gosen, Niigata. Thick plastered walls and closely set pillars make a fireproof dozo, unlike the timber kura nearby.

Discover the Sano Shoten Store and Residence, a 1937 Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Niigata City's Nuttari district. This traditional machiya features segai-zukuri eaves and vertical board cladding.

Discover Seikōkan, a registered tangible cultural property ryokan nestled in Deyu Onsen, Niigata's oldest hot spring dating back 1,200 years. This three-story wooden inn built in 1928 features exquisite sukiya-style craftsmanship and 100% free-flowing natural radium hot spring water.

Dairinji's storehouse of 1928 was moved from a blacksmith's lot in 1986. Its walls set namako lattice against black plaster, with crane-and-tortoise reliefs on the eaves.

Built in 1931 at an 1846 Niigata restaurant, this two-story sukiya wing holds a tea room below and paired rooms above. Its gable screen won registration in 2000.

An early-Showa storehouse at a Niigata restaurant, with tiled namako lower walls and double doors stacked in matching pairs. Registered in 2000; now a dining room.

Completed in 1929 and registered in 2005 for its design quality, this scratch-tiled Neo-Gothic hall in central Niigata is a free museum you can walk straight into.

Oil magnate Niitsu Tsunekichi built this 1938 Niigata guest house for foreign visitors who never came. In 1998 it became the prefecture's first registered building.

This 1967 hall on Mount Ninoji in Shibata City steps its worship and offering halls up through one tatami room. Registered in 2024; it is also the trailhead.

Standing on the central avenue of Tsubame City in Niigata Prefecture, the Tsubame Church of the United Church of Christ in Japan is a two-story wooden Western-style church built in 1930. With a kindergarten on the first floor and a chapel above, it long supported the working families of this metalworking town. Locally attributed to architect W. M. Vories, it is one of very few surviving prewar Christian buildings in Niigata, and was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2021. Its white weatherboard façade, semicircular arched windows, and small gable cross still shape the streetscape of Tsubame today.

South of the strolling garden, on the path between the tea houses, Ihanoya is a tiny building of the late 1940s, just eight square metres, and a garden accent.

On the western edge of the Dairo-an precinct, this early-Showa storehouse is long and narrow, with tall columns raising a high interior for storing provisions.

On a rise at the southwest corner, this late-1940s sukiya tea house faces Sado Island, designed by garden master Tanaka Taiami with fine interior beamwork.

Southeast of the Great Hall, this L-shaped tea house of 1950 joins a thatched grass-hut wing and a tiled shoin wing, by Tanaka Taiami facing the garden.

On the north of the grounds, this 1927 two-story house with a lookout tower was a branch family's home, its tall storeys marking a regional Showa residence.

Along the south wall at the estate front, this small early-Showa kura kept the Ito family's valuables, built solid with white plaster over a namako base.