Meiji

The Odagaki Family Residence Wall is a 22-meter late Meiji wall in Tamba-Sasayama, with board, plaster and tile bands and copper-roofed garden gates on the street.

A mid-Meiji wall along the street front of the Hirao estate in Morio, Toyooka: 58 metres of tile-topped wall, plastered to the street and plain clay inside.

A mid-Meiji service gate at the west end of the Hirao estate in Morio, Toyooka: a bracketed gate 3.2 metres wide with sliding doors, set at the end of the road.

A mid-Meiji well shelter between the rice storehouse and carpenters' shed of the Hirao estate in Morio, Toyooka: 2.7 metres square over a stone well curb.

A mid-Meiji gate and fence before the formal entrance of the Hirao main house in Morio, Toyooka: a 1.5-metre bracketed gate with 12 metres of black plaster fence.

A mid-Meiji gate for honoured guests before the Hirao guest house in Morio, Toyooka: a 2.5-metre bracketed gate with 27 metres of lattice-windowed wall by the river.

A mid-Meiji partition wall and gate between the Hirao guest house and main garden in Morio, Toyooka: white plaster toward the guests and plain clay toward the house.

A mid-Meiji partition and wicket gate between the Hirao guest house and inner garden in Morio, Toyooka: white plaster, a plank door, and a bay under the eaves.

A mid-Meiji porch on the Hirao ceramics storehouse in Morio, Toyooka, with a back gate between two storehouses; its bare gable timbers stand out on plaster.

A mid-Meiji rainwater basin among the Hirao storehouses in Morio, Toyooka: 1.8 metres square in cut stone with a brick rim and a 15-metre drain westward.

A mid-Meiji partition and wicket gate by the Hirao treasure storehouse in Morio, Toyooka: a 10-metre board fence dividing two gardens, clad differently on each side.

A mid-Meiji wall and gate beside the Hirao retirement house in Morio, Toyooka: 8.6 metres of boarding left open at the top, with a 1.6-metre bracketed gate.

A tiny Meiji-period subsidiary shrine at Tomari Shrine in Kakogawa, Hyogo, registered in 2008, matching the Sumiyoshi shrine beside it in size, form and carving.

Painted in 1890 by Honda Kinkichirō, Hagoromo Tennyo (The Heavenly Maiden in the Legend of Hagoromo) is a Meiji-era oil painting that depicts a celestial maiden soaring above Mt. Fuji and Miho-no-Matsubara. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2024, it is held at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe. This guide introduces the painting's blend of Japanese subject and Western technique, its painter's life, its remarkable journey across the Pacific, and how to visit.

Preserved at Museum Abashiri Prison in Hokkaido, the Former Abashiri Prison Chapel and Administration Building are nationally designated Important Cultural Properties rebuilt in 1912. Their unique Japanese-Western hybrid design tells the story of Meiji-era penal architecture and Hokkaido's pioneer past.

Established in 1896 on a forested hillside west of Abashiri City, the Futamigaoka Branch is one of Japan's only agricultural prison complexes and the oldest surviving wooden prison architecture in the country. Four buildings—the kitchen, the chapel and dining hall, the key and chain attachment office, and the inmate quarters—are designated as Important Cultural Properties, spanning the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras. Relocated to the Abashiri Prison Museum in 1999, the complex offers a rare and vivid window onto the evolution of Japanese penal architecture.

This 1877 wooden office shows how the Hokkaido Development Commission's builders copied American pattern books, visible in its ridge ornament and porch gable.

The former Hanada family bansho on Hokkaido's coast is a herring fishery from around 1905. The largest surviving bansho in Hokkaido, it once lodged some 200 crews.

The Tachikawa Family House Shop in Hakodate, a brick shop of 1900 with a timber truss roof, looks like a Japanese storehouse and mixes Japanese and Western styles.

The former Otaru branch of Nippon Yusen Kaisha, a stone building completed in 1906, keeps its original fittings and hosted the 1906 talks on the Sakhalin border.