Meiji

Near Tōjō Beach in Kamogawa, the Suzuki family's hiire-gura stored sake through its final pasteurization, a heat technique Japan used long before Pasteur.

The Inari shrine at the Someya residence is early Meiji. On high ground, a small nagare-zukuri shrine sits within a gabled shelter for the household deity.

The fertilizer shed at the Someya residence is a plain early-Meiji building. Its earthen floor is split in two for making and storing fertilizer for the fields.

The front storehouse at the Someya residence dates to 1893 and began as a rice granary. Its plastered walls and namako base recall a farming family that also traded.

Built in 1889 along the historic Edogawa waterway in Nagareyama, the Former Terada-en Shop is a Nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property. This black-lacquered kura-style merchant storehouse, the only one of its kind remaining on Nagareyama Honcho main street, now serves as a kaleidoscope gallery and Japanese tea cafe.

Tomoe Bridge in Tateyama City, Chiba Prefecture, is a single-arch stone bridge built in 1906 by a local stonemason. Having survived the Great Kanto Earthquake tsunami and wartime tank crossings, it is registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property as one of the few remaining Meiji-era stone arch bridges in the Kanto region.

Built in 1891 to hold grain, this two-story earthen kura survives from a Tsudanuma merchant's estate in Narashino, with battened siding and bold interior beams.

Near Tokyo in Narashino, the Hirose family's 1909 grain warehouse is a Registered Cultural Property built without earthen walls, using densely set, board-clad posts.

In Chonan, central Chiba, a small Meiji storehouse held the Hoshino pharmacy's dispensary. Registered with the shop and gate, it looks much as in 1895.

The Hoshino Family Pharmacy in Chōnan, Chiba, is a Meiji-era black-plastered earthen shop on a former post-town street, still selling medicine after a century.

Built in 1871 by the Edo River, this Noda wharf merchant's house keeps three boat-inn rooms upstairs and a flood-gated brick wall—a rare relic of river trade.

In Noda, a former Edo River shipping family kept a Fudo Myo-o shrine under a square meter, built with the carpentry of a real shrine hall. Exterior view only.

In Noda, Chiba, a brick wall once doubled as flood defense: grooves at its ends held boards to dam the Edo River, fronting a Meiji-era river merchant's home.

A small tiled gate at a river-wharf merchant's house on the Edogawa in Noda, surviving beside a brick flood wall as a rare trace of the river's lost boat trade.

Discover Maruya, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Kamagaya City, Chiba. This former Edo-period hatago inn on the Kioroshi Kaido preserves the atmosphere of a bygone post town, with connections to literary travelers and even a future emperor.

Discover Maruya Hanare, a nationally registered tangible cultural property in Kamagaya City, Chiba. This refined Meiji-period annex of a former Kioroshi Kaido post-town inn once hosted Crown Prince Yoshihito, later Emperor Taisho.

Built in 1907 at an 1834-founded brewery in Futtsu, Chiba, this earthen storehouse once held rice and now stores soy-sauce barrels under a Meiji-era truss roof.

In Sanuki, a former castle town in Futtsu, Chiba, Miya has brewed soy sauce since the Edo period. The 1892 main house is one of nine registered buildings.

Newly designated in 2024, 839 documents trace one Nichiren temple across 620 years, from a monk's vow to guard his master's writings to letters from the Edo shogun's court.

Completed in 1871 as the reception hall for the Imperial Mint Bureau, Senpukan is the oldest surviving Western-style building in Osaka Prefecture. Designed by Irish engineer Thomas J. Waters in the Veranda Colonial style, this elegant brick structure was named by Emperor Meiji himself, meaning 'Hall of Currency.' Designated as a national Important Cultural Property, it stands as a remarkable symbol of Japan's earliest steps toward modernization.