Taishō
Okinawa · 大正Browse Okinawa’s cultural heritage from the Taishō period (1912 – 1926). Filter by type and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
Completed in 1925, the Old Ogimi Village Office is the oldest surviving reinforced concrete building in Okinawa. Featuring a distinctive octagonal and cruciform design engineered to withstand typhoons, this national Important Cultural Property offers a fascinating glimpse into Okinawa's architectural modernization.
Nakandakari Hijaa in Nanjo City, Okinawa, is a traditional stone-built communal spring representing the finest example of Ryukyuan water heritage. Reconstructed in Ryukyu limestone by Tsuken Island stonemasons in 1912, the facility features separate bathing areas for men and women and Okinawa's only Goemon bath at a communal spring. Designated as a nationally Important Cultural Property in 1995, this site offers visitors a rare glimpse into the island's centuries-old water culture.
Built in 1912 on Kuroshima, the Kamiyama Residence main house is a low, red-tiled timber farmhouse with an eight-mat principal room, a Tangible Cultural Property.
On a coral atoll 360 km east of Okinawa, this coursed-limestone office once ran the Tōyō Sugar Company's phosphate mine. Registered in 2005, it is now a museum.
In the port area of Kitadaitō Island stand the remains of a communal bath used by phosphate miners and residents. Two concrete tubs survive. Registered in 2007.
On riverless Kitadaitō Island, a sloping mortar floor of 500 square metres caught rainwater into two sunken tanks to supply the Shimosaka bath. Registered in 2007.
A round stone cistern supplying the Tōyō Sugar employee bath on Kitadaitō Island, about 2.5 m deep and 8.9 m across inside, with limestone walls. Registered in 2007.
A reinforced-concrete staff bath in the old company village of Kitadaitō Island, roofed with a segmental-arch slab and split into three rooms. Registered in 2007.
Standing on a coral-limestone bluff overlooking the West Port of Minami-Daito Island, this roofless stone shell built around 1924 once housed the steam engine that powered the winches used to haul boats ashore during typhoons. Constructed in irregular dry-stacked masonry from the island's own coral limestone, it overlooks the very cove where the 1900 pioneer expedition first set foot on this remote Pacific island. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2000, it is one of the most evocative surviving relics of Minami-Daito's unique frontier history.