Meiji
Okayama · 明治Browse Okayama’s cultural heritage from the Meiji period (1868 – 1912). Filter by type and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
The cotton store of 1888 from the founding of the Kurashiki spinning company in Kurashiki, Okayama, a storehouse-style building, is now a museum in Ivy Square.
Registered as the Torajiro Kojima Memorial Museum, this U-shaped brick warehouse of 1906 in Kurashiki was built for the spinning mill, with bold framed doorways.
Konko Gakuen Memorial Hall in Asakuchi is a 1904 timber assembly hall, moved in 1956 and registered in 2014, mixing Japanese and Western design under a hipped roof.
Saidaiji Gooshoden Inner Hall, built 1869 on a stone embankment in Okayama, packs a veranda and dense carving into 9.2 square meters. Registered in 2017.
Saidaiji Gooshoden Main Hall, Tsuriden and Worship Hall, built by Oku carpenters in 1880 in Okayama, leaves its roof framing exposed. Registered in 2017.
This 1909 bank in Tsuyama, Okayama looks like carved stone but is entirely timber, its Renaissance orders worked in wood. Now a free folk craft museum.
The east storehouse of the Sato Family Residence is a late-Edo tool store, the smallest of its four registered plastered buildings. Registered in 2019.
Built in 1905 on the site of Edo era dormitories, this timber schoolhouse in Bizen, Okayama sits inside the grounds of Japan's oldest school for commoners.
Jissaiji's gate in Kurashiki is a tiled yakuimon of 1884, its 2.6-metre opening flanked by earthen sleeve walls and carried on flattened posts. Registered 2019.
Jissaiji Bell Tower in Kurashiki was built in 1879 and moved from the cemetery in 1926. It reuses older timbers and drops one tie beam to clear the striking log.
Jissaiji Outer Wall and Stone Wall in Kurashiki encloses the temple's east and north sides: a 61-metre Meiji earthen wall set on 71 metres of old stonework.
Jissaiji Barn in Kurashiki, from about 1884, stands by the temple gate with a hipped south end and a gabled north end, and it served as a flood shelter in 1893.
A late Meiji house in Tsuyama, Okayama, registered in 2009 as a model of architectural form. Thick, naturally curved logs cross in a grid over its earthen doma.
A late Meiji clay storehouse in Tsuyama, Okayama, registered in 2009. First used for rice, it has a separately set gable roof, plaster walls and board skirting.
A long late Meiji barn in Tsuyama, Okayama, listed in 2009. Its south half held a store and room above; the north half stabled horses and cattle under a hay loft.
A late Meiji gate and well shelter fronting the old Izumo road in Tsuyama, Okayama, registered in 2009. Inside is an octagonal tuff well inscribed April 1907.
The early Meiji service wing of the Kajimura estate in Tsuyama, Okayama: 25 square meters of privies and utility space, registered as a building hard to reproduce.
The main house of a merchant compound in Mabicho, Kurashiki. Two storeys, a shikidai entrance and a six-room plan with carved seasonal transoms. Listed in 2025.
A plastered storehouse of 51 m² on the eastern edge of a merchant compound in Mabicho, Kurashiki. It held working tools and contains a matted room. Listed in 2025.
A gate 1.3 m wide and 8.5 m of tiled wall inside a merchant compound in Mabicho, Kurashiki. Bending at right angles, they close the western side. Listed in 2025.