Meiji

A tiny Meiji archive storehouse on the Gomyō family's Nagano estate, with white-plaster walls and cloud-carved brackets over its east door. Registered 2010.

A Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Ueda. This small earthen granary, built in 1897, served a Sato silkworm-egg household in a famed egg-card village.

A mid-Meiji silkworm room in Kamishiojiri near Ueda, its full-length monitor roof built to ventilate the rearing rooms. A private residence, seen from the street.

West of the main house in Saku, Nagano: a slender 6.6-by-3.7m earthen storehouse, boarded floor, with a miso room attached beneath an offset roof. Registered 2011.

Squeezed between two neighbours on a stone wall in Saku, Nagano: an earth floor, exposed roof timbers, a built-in rice bin, and a roof with no gable ends. Meiji era.

The smallest of four registered buildings on a Saku farmstead in Nagano: a near-square timber box of 21 square metres, throwing out a lattice and a bay window.

Shimaki Akahiko's Former Residence is a rare late-Edo to early-Meiji hontō-zukuri farmhouse in Shiojiri, Nagano, where the celebrated Araragi-school tanka poet lived from 1909 to 1911. Now relocated beside the Shiojiri Tanka Museum, it offers visitors a quiet window into Japan's modern poetic heritage.

The Jotokuin Gate in Nagano City is an early Meiji-period yakuimon-style gate serving as the formal entrance to Jotokuin, a Tendai Buddhist sub-temple of Zenkoji. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2006, this wooden gate is one of the rare structures that survived the devastating 1891 fire in the Zenkoji temple district, featuring distinctive architectural details including triple-stepped bracket sets and a gable roof with pan-tile covering.

Discover Shirahige Shrine Haiden, a Nagano City Designated Cultural Property in the legendary village of Kinasa. Explore its elegant Irimoya architecture, ties to Emperor Tenmu's capital relocation plan, and the tale of the demon-slaying warrior Taira no Koremochi.

A late-Meiji preparation cellar at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, notable for interior posts built up from bolted planks. Listed as hard to recreate.

The 1909 main house of the Takeshige brewery in Motai, with plastered gables and a passage to the cellars behind. Its walled street front is a famed Nakasendo scene.

Standing in the Kawagishi district of Okaya City, Nagano Prefecture, the Chuo Printing Company Building (Former Katakura Group Office) is a wood-frame two-story Registered Tangible Cultural Property completed in 1910 as the headquarters of the Katakura Group, the largest silk-reeling enterprise in Japan. Built within the grounds of the Kakigai Silk Reeling Factory — Katakura's birthplace — its dignified facade combines artificial stone pier columns with brick walls, while a Western-style first floor pairs with a Japanese hall above. Selected in the very first round of registrations in 1996, it remains an evocative monument of 'SILK OKAYA.'

Discover the Nagano Holy Saviour Church, a registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1898 by Canadian missionary J.G. Waller. This Gothic-style brick chapel near Zenkoji Temple features pointed arches, rose windows, buttresses, and stained glass—a rare architectural gem in Nagano.

The Japan Crane Association Nagano Branch Museum in Nagano City is a nationally registered tangible cultural property that preserves the former Ikeda Police Station, originally built in 1893 during the Meiji era. Discover this charming two-story Western-style wooden building featuring a hipped-roof entrance porch and exquisite lace-like barge board decorations that showcase the unique beauty of Japan's pseudo-Western architectural tradition.

Discover Nippon Sei Ko Kai Matsumoto Holy Cross Church, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Nagano Prefecture. Built in 1910 by Canadian missionary F.W.C. Kennedy, this Gothic-style wooden church features scissor truss ceilings, pointed arches, and a striking bell tower near Matsumoto Castle.

A tiny thatched watermill hut at Hanaya Hotel in Bessho Onsen, barely a ken and a half square, with chestnut posts that resist damp and a waterwheel on its west wall.

West of the Miharaya shop, the 1872 North Storehouse dresses its street gable in namako-kabe and sets its windows high, so two floors read as three from the road.

West of Zenkoji temple, the 1872 Miharaya shop sets an open storefront beside a namako-kabe warehouse. This miso and soy-sauce brewer, founded in 1848, still works here.

South of the shop, the 1877 Middle Storehouse lifts a hipped third storey above a two-storey earthen body, anchoring the alley view along Uchiwaya-koji.

West of the South Storehouse, the 1877 West Storehouse is a two-storey gabled earthen store for miso, linked on its upper floor to the South Storehouse next door.