Meiji
明治Browse Japan’s cultural heritage from the Meiji period (1868 – 1912). Filter by prefecture, type, and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
An 1893 tea room in Kanie, Aichi, built under the design guidance of Yoshida Shokei of Omotesenke. Four and a half mats, 35 square meters. Registered 2011, closed.
A single-storey timber shed in Inuyama, Aichi, built in 1909 to hold a three-tier festival float. Its 7-metre eaves and 4.55-metre frontage follow the float.
A mid-Meiji machiya at the junction of two old highways in Inuyama, Aichi, registered in 2004. Its plot still follows a late Edo castle map showing a notice board.
The Yoshino Family Residence in Inuyama, Aichi, had five buildings listed in 2013, and all were struck from the register on 10 February 2026 after demolition.
Built in 1878 as an exposition appraisal hall in Nagoya and used as Emperor Meiji's temporary seat, this timber hall moved to Atsuta Shrine in 1968. Registered 2001.
The 1882 bell tower of Renkyoji in Nagoya, a hip-and-gable belfry with leaning posts, fan rafters and a carved turtle on its gable. Registered property.
At the south-east corner of Renkei-ji in Agui, Aichi, this east-facing great gate of 1896 rests on unusually dense packed bracketry. Registered nationally in 2013.
Held in the Hosa Library in Nagoya, the Song Edition of the Taiping Shenghui Fang (Kanazawa Bunko Version) is a Southern Song printed copy of the imperial medical encyclopedia originally compiled in 100 volumes by Wang Huaiyin under the command of Emperor Taizong. Designated an Important Cultural Property, it traveled from Hōjō Sanetoki's Kanazawa Bunko through Toyotomi Hidetsugu and Tokugawa Ieyasu to the first Owari lord Tokugawa Yoshinao. The 24 surviving printed booklets, supplemented by 27 Keichō-era manuscript volumes, bear the distinctive 'Kanazawa Bunko' and 'Gohon' seals on every volume, making it a primary witness to East Asian medical history.
A Meiji wax merchant's estate in Uchiko, Ehime. Ten listed buildings keep the cauldron house and bleaching yard beside the living rooms. Open as a wax museum.
A Meiji villa on a cliff above the Hiji River in Ozu. Three listed buildings: a thatched house of seven rooms, a retreat cantilevered over the water, a storehouse.
An 1882 wooden schoolhouse in Unomachi, Seiyo, Ehime, built by a local carpenter with arched windows as its light Western touch; now an education museum.
Standing on the small island of Tsurushima off Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, Tsurushima Lighthouse is a Western-style stone lighthouse completed in 1873 to the design of Richard Henry Brunton, the Scottish engineer known as the Father of Japanese Lighthouses. It is one of the very few Meiji-era lighthouses still in active service in essentially its original form, and was designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2024 together with its former keepers' quarters, warehouse and stone walls.
A wax merchant's house in Uchiko, an Important Cultural Property since 1990: four buildings of about 1884, with plaster relief worked across the street wall.
A walled frontage of about 1893 in Kihoku, Ehime. Undressed stone runs 44 metres beside the entrance steps, carrying a tiled earthen wall of 26 metres. Listed 2012.
An earthen-walled storehouse of about 1893 in Kihoku, Ehime. Charred cedar boards, lime plaster at the windows, a roof set clear of the walls. Registered 2012.
A single-storey wooden house of about 1893 at the foot of a hill in Kihoku Town, Ehime. Formal rooms in front, kitchen behind; 236 square metres. Registered in 2012.
A sandstone retaining wall of the middle Meiji era in Kihoku, Ehime, running 100 metres along the south edge of the estate, up to 2.7 metres high. Listed 2012.
Umenishiki Yamakawa Main House fronts the old Kawanoe road in Shikokuchuo, Ehime: a mid-Meiji brewer's shop and home under one tiled roof. Registered in 2001.
Built in 1884 as a police station, moved in 1953 to serve as a town hall and returned in 1992, this Uwajima museum was the first building listed in Ehime.
A late Meiji rendered timber office in Kawanoishi, Yawatahama, its door set into a chamfered corner, listed in 1999 and still used by the silkworm egg firm.