Meiji

The Yamashita Family Residence Main House, an 1899 town house in Tsuji, Miyoshi, is known for its curved hongawara-tiled roof. Its layout, story and how to see it.

The Yamashita Family Residence Miso Storehouse in Tsuji, Miyoshi, is an early Meiji earth-walled kura of 9.9 by 4.9 m said to have held general-store stock.

The Aoki villa in Nasushiobara, Tochigi, built in 1888 by Matsugasaki Tsumunaga for a pioneer farm, is clad in scale-patterned slate and open as a memorial museum.

The Former Nikko Tamozawa Imperial Villa in Nikko, Tochigi, listed in 2003, links ten buildings and 106 rooms under one roof, among them a moved Edo daimyo mansion.

Built around 1889 in Nogi Town, Tochigi, this sixteen-sided Hoffmann kiln fired brick for eighty years. One of four left in Japan; 100 yen to walk inside.

The Furukawa Bridge at Ashio, Nikko, is a German-made steel truss of 1890, bolted together for the copper mine and the oldest of its make still in place in Japan.

An Important Cultural Property in Nasu, Tochigi: home of the Mimori family of village headmen, with a thatched 1733 main house and a long front gatehouse.

Created in late Meiji-era Ashikaga, the Shindo Family Garden uses a dramatic five-meter elevation difference to produce a vertical garden composition virtually without parallel in Japan. A three-meter waterfall, an S-shaped pond, and a two-story detached residence form a single integrated landscape designated a National Registered Monument (Place of Scenic Beauty). Normally a private residence, it occasionally opens during Ashikaga's autumn cultural heritage events.

The Ashio Christian Church in Nikko, Tochigi, built in 1908, was the copper town's first full-scale church and is its only survivor, with a pastor's home attached.

Oldest building on this Tochigi City merchant plot, an 1895 storehouse divided into a document store and a goods store, its carpenter named in ink. Registered 2004.

Ashikaga's Oya-stone mill of 1903, with arched windows and a double sawtooth roof, is the sole survivor of six model silk-throwing mills built under Meiji policy.

Built around 1907, the back gate of the Iizuka new residence is timber with a pantile gabled roof. Though at the rear, it is large and finely built.

Built of granite around 1907, the Iizuka new residence front gate has tile-roofed board fences on stone bases. Its tall single-stone posts signal the family's rank.

The Shintaku main house of the Iizuka residence in Bato, built around 1907, shows an early modern feel in its orderly plan and refined reception rooms.

The courtyard gate of the Iizuka new residence, built around 1908, links storehouse and main house, enclosing an inner garden behind openwork lattice fences.

A two-story dozo built in 1908 behind the Iizuka main house, this storehouse was plastered even over its timber for fire safety. It is now a loft-style guest room.

An early Meiji yakuimon gate in Ashikaga, 2.9 meters wide, with thick crossbeams, a wicket door each side and plastered walls. Registered 2003; seen from the road.

An early Meiji timber barn in the corner of an Ashikaga estate, with a trapezoid lean-to cut to fit the lot and three walls in weatherboarding. Registered 2003.

An early Meiji two-storey house of 317 square meters, Ashikaga, with a formal entrance at one end and a weaving floor at the other. Registered 2003; now a playroom.

An early Meiji storehouse on the stone wall along the east edge of an Ashikaga estate, white-plastered, with a deep eave over its garden-side door. Registered 2003.