Edo

At Horikawaya Nomura in Gobo, Wakayama, this workshop presses soy sauce mash and heats it over a wood fire. Its brick chimney marks a brewery registered in 2014.

The First Brewing House at Horikawaya Nomura is a late-Edo store where soy sauce mash matures. Koji mould clings even to the timber here. Registered in 2014.

The Shop and Main House at Horikawaya Nomura is a late-Edo townhouse on Gobo's Shinmachi street, its timber stained red with bengara. It alone is open to visitors.

The storehouse at Horikawaya Nomura is a late-Edo, two-storey dozo near the brewery's heart, its thick walls guarding tools from fire and damp. Registered in 2014.

The Matabei Residence Main House is a late-Edo townhouse in Gobo's temple town, its eaves bearing a local fascia, odare. It frames the lane behind the Betsuin.

The thatched kuri of Horikoshi Shaku Kannon in Katsuragi Town, Wakayama, is a late-Edo building laid out like a farmhouse at a Katsuragi Shugen practice site.

A late Edo townhouse in Hashimoto, Wakayama, on the old Yamato Kaido. Plaster runs to the eaves, a low tsushi-nikai storey, an earthen naka-doma. Registered 2004.

A late Edo storehouse in Hashimoto, Wakayama, roofed in heavy hongawara tile and split inside between utensils, rice and clothing. Registered in 2004.

The Shimogura of the Misoya Annex in Hashimoto, Wakayama, built in 1808, is a small store for miso or tools with careful plasterwork and rafters plastered in waves.

An 1860 house in Kada, Wakayama, whose ridge tablet names patron, timber and carpenters; a four-room plan, exposed loft beams, tie-beams and a lattice front.

A small late-Edo storehouse behind the Mukai main house in Kada, Wakayama: white lime plaster, plastered purlin ends and oversized brackets under the door canopy.

A hemp-palm merchant's house in Kainan, Wakayama: late-Edo living quarters joined in 1906 by a three-storey wing with a railed top floor and palm-leaf roof tiles.

A tall four-legged gate of the mid-Edo period stands before the Important Cultural Property main hall of Risho-Gokoku-ji, the temple locals call the Great Temple.

Cut from local rhyolite in the late Edo period, these steps and wall hold Ryogon-ji to its mountainside and frame the main hall. A Registered Cultural Property.

Built in 1857, this Rinzai Zen main hall stands plain on a stone terrace above Ono hamlet, without canopy or brackets, its strength lying in sturdy joinery.

An Important Cultural Property at Sainanin on Mt. Kōya, showing the guardian deity Daigensui Myōō. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a Yuan Chinese work.

An Important Cultural Property at Kongobuji, from Yuan-dynasty China. Tradition calls it Yakushi, the Medicine Buddha, but its official title names only a buddha.

Ten sliding-door panels by Ike no Taiga (1723–1776), a founding master of Japanese literati painting, preserved at Henjōkōin temple on sacred Mount Kōya in Wakayama. Designated a National Treasure of Japan in 1952, the set includes the celebrated Sansei gakai-zu — Elegant Gathering at the Mountain Pavilion — and stands as one of only three Taiga works ever to receive Japan's highest cultural designation, surviving in the prestigious sub-temple for which it was originally painted.