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.
Built by the Kaitakushi in 1880 and opened as Emperor Meiji's lodging, this white clapboard hotel in Sapporo's Nakajima Park keeps its ultramarine trim.
Nine Meiji farm buildings on the Hokkaido University campus, built on Clark's plan for large-scale stock farming. Free entry, three barns open inside each summer.
A thatched settler farmhouse in Date City left by the Watari Date migration. Two rooms and an earth floor, heavily framed, with a plan echoed by later militia huts.
Asahikawa's last surviving army riding hall, built in brick for winter cavalry drill. Iron Fink trusses span it, and a bus company services vehicles inside it today.
Built in 1899 to season carriage timber, this square brick building in Asahikawa shows Flemish bond walls, three-centred gable arches and overburnt brick trim.
Where carriage woodwork was cut and fitted from 1899, this Asahikawa brick workshop pairs broad arched windows with slit openings and now serves as a public hall.
This small wooden building in Hidaka Town, Hokkaido keeps two formal rooms salvaged in 1951 from a 1911 imperial lodging, under a coved coffered ceiling in hinoki.
Facing the Pacific in Hidaka Town, Hokkaido, this late Meiji house joins a Western reception room to two tatami rooms by a corridor turning a right angle.
A Meiji-era wooden office in southern Sapporo, built in 1887, honoring Edwin Dun, the Ohio rancher who founded Hokkaido's dairy industry from Makomanai in 1876.
A single-storey brick warehouse of 1904 west of the office in the Kamikawa Warehouses, Asahikawa. Its long side faces Miyashita-dori; in 2001 it was a public hall.
A 1903 brick warehouse at the west corner of the Kamikawa Warehouses, Asahikawa, with king post trusses and a dentilled cornice; once a chair gallery, now a gallery.
A 1910 brick warehouse on the station side of the Kamikawa Warehouses, Asahikawa, with stretcher bond walls and a two-tier dentil cornice; a free gallery since 1997.
The first of the Kamikawa Warehouses in Asahikawa, finished in 1900: a brick warehouse at the north corner with a three-centred arch door, now a rehearsal hall.
A 1904 brick warehouse east of the office in the Kamikawa Warehouses, Asahikawa: gabled, tiled, laid in English bond with dark brick corner piers, a pair with No. 1.
A hexagonal cabin on a brick cylinder, built in 1909 to supply a Sapporo army garrison. Registered in 2001, it stands offshore in Nishioka Park, free to view.
The brick portal of the Tenryu pit's material-haulage incline of 1900, its walls five bricks thick framing a semicircular arch with pilasters and a name plaque.
The brick portal of the Tenryu pit's man-car incline, where carriages took miners underground, eleven metres wide with a conical keystone, pilasters and wing walls.
Step inside Japan's only publicly walkable coal mine: a 180-metre brick-arched tunnel in Yubari, Hokkaidō, with a real coal seam to touch, vintage shearers, and an 1888 origin story.
A 1911 timber rice granary at Takaoka in Ishikari, Hokkaido, registered in 2024. A single central post carries the ridge beam; the interior is not open to visitors.
Ginrinso Former Main Building in Otaru is a late Meiji herring mansion moved from Yoichi in 1938. Registered in 2023, it holds a six-room hall and a large shrine.