Meiji

Spanning the Kojoro River gorge in Niihama City, Ehime Prefecture, Otoshi Bridge is one of Japan's oldest surviving steel arch bridges. Built in 1905 with German Burbach steel as a combined road bridge and drainage channel for the legendary Besshi Copper Mine, this 48-metre spandrel-braced single-arch structure is registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property. Standing silently in a deep mountain gorge, it remains a vivid witness to the industrial heritage that powered Japan's modernization.

Kimura Family Residence Main House, an 1881 merchant house in Mitsu, Matsuyama, keeps its earth-floored passage, boxed stair and tall loft under a tiled roof.

This early Meiji storehouse in Mitsu, Matsuyama, was built for rice, then reopened toward the sea with three tall sash windows and used as a study. Registered 2019.

The smallest of the four listed Kimura buildings in Mitsu, Matsuyama, this former storeroom became a bathroom in 1914 and keeps its bat-motif tiles. Registered 2019.

Built in 1911 as a merchants' inn in Uwajima, Ehime, this wooden two-story building has a frontage over 20 meters and guest rooms with individual alcove fittings.

Built in 1905 as the sales office for Tobe's Baizan kiln, this merchant house keeps a ten-mat room with a biwa-doko alcove. Registered in 2023, open weekends, free.

This 1905 earthen-walled storehouse shipped Tobe porcelain out of town. A Western roof truss clears the upper floor above a central hoisting well. Registered 2023.

A late Meiji sake storehouse in Uchiko, Ehime, framed with traditional inclined beams instead of a truss. Registered in 2024, it now holds the town history displays.

A mid-Meiji merchant house in Uchiko with a nineteen-metre frontage, white and grey plaster in contrast, and a carved crane on the gable. Now a soba restaurant.

A 1912 brick hydroelectric station of the Besshi copper mine in Niihama, Ehime, registered in 2011, keeping its original generators and Pelton wheels; free to visit.

Driven in 1893 for the Besshi copper mine railway in Niihama, Ehime, this curving brick bore runs 93 meters, with pilasters and a two-faced keystone at its portal.

Built in 1893 for the Besshi copper mine railway in Niihama, Ehime, this 39-meter German bowstring Warren truss still carries a tourist train over the Ashitanikawa.

On a wooded slope above the Uwa Sea in Ikata, Ehime, the Former Misaki Refinery Kiln preserves 22 Meiji-era copper smelting kilns with green schist arches.

A wax merchant's townhouse of about 1869 in Ozu, Ehime, with a 12-metre frontage, deep bracketed eaves and three linked reception rooms on the upper floor.

A middle Meiji storehouse behind the Murakami compound in Ozu, Ehime, raised on cut stone against Hijikawa floods and faced with sea-cucumber tiling at the base.

Standing atop Mt. Shoji in Niihama, Ehime, the Former Yamane Smelter Chimney is a 19-meter Meiji-era brick chimney built in 1888 and registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2009. Discover its history, the Besshi Copper Mine, and how to visit "Entotsu-yama."

The street front of a physician's estate in Dogo, Matsuyama: a bracket gate 3.5 metres wide with doors free of metal fittings, and 26 metres of plastered wall.

A late-Meiji physician's house on the shrine approach in Dogo, Matsuyama. A carved phoenix hangs from its convex entrance gable, and a tea room adjoins the door.

A copper-roofed gate and its plastered walls dividing the garden of a physician's estate in Dogo, Matsuyama into an entrance side and a reception side.

A roofed bench of just 2.2 square metres in a physician's garden in Dogo, Matsuyama, framed in knotty logs and linked to the tea room by stepping stones.