Edo
江戸Browse Japan’s cultural heritage from the Edo period (1603 – 1868). Filter by prefecture, type, and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
A True Pure Land temple in Takaoka, Toyama, whose 1795 main hall and great hall became National Treasures in 2022, with ten more listed buildings, all restored.
From 1860, the stone first torii of Ichihara Shrine in Namerikawa is 4.6 m wide with inward-leaning pillars and capital collars, its oldest registered structure.
A Soto Zen hall of 1661 to 1751 at Kanseiji in Takaoka, Toyama, built on the plain eight-room abbot plan. From 1902 it served as a classroom for trainee nuns.
A fairly large wooden yakuimon gate of 1868 in Toyama with bending roofed walls, thatched until 1941; a rare Edo-period farmhouse gate, registered in 1998.
A wooden munamon gate of 1865 to 1868 in Toyama, opening toward land thought to have been the domain lord's hawking ground; registered as heritage in 1998.
An 860 m² farmhouse of 1868 in Toyama, with a great hall of long timbers, Meiji formal rooms and study, and suikinkutsu water chimes; registered 1998, open inside.
A late Edo townhouse on the old Hokuriku highway in Namerikawa, rebuilt after an 1866 fire, with a 14 m front, wakunouchi beams and a facade restored to look Meiji.
An 1855 earthen-walled storehouse in Namerikawa, Toyama, that outlived the 1866 fire. White and black lime plaster, torii-frame windows. Registered in 2017.
Built in 1843, Otaki Shrine's joined main and worship halls carry a cypress-bark roof called Japan's most complex, raised for the paper goddess Kawakami-gozen.
A late-Edo thatched farmhouse in Katsuyama, Fukui, built by Eiheiji carpenters for a headman. Its winged front-hall plan marks the peak of the Echizen tradition.
Kehi Jingū's vermilion Great Torii in Tsuruga, Fukui, dates to 1645. Nearly 11 m tall, it survived the raid that burned the shrine and is now its oldest building.
Founded in 1658 as the Matsudaira mortuary temple, Daianji in Fukui City has five halls designated in 2008 and is midway through a repair campaign you can watch.
A late-Edo farmhouse of about 1809, moved to a park in Echizen, Fukui. Its sideways-T plan with two projecting wings is the most developed of this regional farmhouse form.
Fukui's oldest farmhouse, known as Senko no Ie, raised on hand-hewn chestnut posts, three of them forked matabashira, with an irimoya front and a hipped rear roof.
The Former Hashimoto Residence in Ono, Fukui, is an early-18th-century farmhouse with snow-country framing, a large earthen-floored niwa, and rare earth-seated rooms.
The Horiguchi Residence in Ikeda, Fukui, is an early-18th-century farmhouse using five mata-bashira, naturally forked pillars, the most in the prefecture.
A two-storey plastered storehouse at Aoki Ranjado in Fukui, built around a middle storehouse of 1800, where the family still makes its herbal liquor Ranjashu.
The Ishida Residence main house on Fukui's Echizen coast is a late-Edo timber home under russet Echizen tile, built by a family of village headmen. Exterior view only.
The oldest Ishida storehouse, this late-Edo building has a miso lean-to whose east wall is namako-kabe, a grid of black tile and white plaster. Exterior only.
Built in 1835 and moved from a hill hamlet in 2017, this two-sleeve farmhouse at the Echizen Ancient Kiln Museum was registered in 2018 and is still in daily use.