Meiji

In Ome, Tokyo, the main house of Sōshidō is a Meiji silk-farm dwelling that the novelist Yoshikawa Eiji redesigned himself around 1948, writing beside its garden.

In Ome, Tokyo, the Western annex of Sōshidō held Yoshikawa Eiji's study. Built in late Meiji, it gathers materials from across Japan, from Seto tile to Ōya stone.

The Shimoda Residence Bunko-gura in Nishitokyo, Tokyo, is a small Meiji-era earthen storehouse kept by a family of hereditary village headmen and registered in 2019.

Tucked inside Shirayuri University's wooded campus in suburban Tokyo, Megumi-so is a remarkable early-Meiji farmhouse with a triple life: originally the main hall of the Kikuchi family — hereditary village headmen in Izu Shuzenji — it was relocated to Tokyo in 1930 and moved again within the campus in 1967. Registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2014, the building preserves a massive central pillar, a classic six-room plan, and traces of a ceremonial stepped entrance. This guide explains its history, architectural highlights, and how to visit during its annual public opening.

Built in 1903, this small brick observatory has an octagonal ground floor, a circular upper floor and a rotating dome that once held an equatorial telescope.

Built in 1903, this single-story brick observatory has an octagonal plan and a pyramidal roof, and once held a meridian instrument for keeping precise time.

A Southern Song celadon vase of shimokabura form, a Japanese National Treasure with a smooth, crackle-free pale-blue glaze. Its kiln is still debated by scholars.

Held at The Railway Museum in Saitama, the Tetsudō Komonjo (Railway Archives) is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property comprising 91 volumes of administrative records spanning 1870 to 1893. These foundational documents reveal how Japan built its first railways — surveys, land deals, British equipment, regulations, even uniforms. Survivors of the 1923 earthquake and WWII evacuation, they offer a rare window into Meiji modernization.

Filmed in November 1899 behind Tokyo's Kabuki-za theatre, Momijigari is the oldest surviving film made by a Japanese cinematographer and the only moving record of two of the Meiji era's greatest kabuki actors, Ichikawa Danjūrō IX and Onoe Kikugorō V. In 2009 it became the first film of any kind to be designated a Japanese Important Cultural Property. This guide explains how the film came to be made, why it matters, and how international visitors can engage with it today through the National Film Archive of Japan in Kyobashi, Tokyo.

Discover the Important Cultural Property collection of over 3,000 documents related to Okubo Toshimichi, one of the Three Great Nobles of the Meiji Restoration, housed at the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura, Chiba.

A National Treasure near Tokyo: a Southern Song printing of the Hanshu in 61 fascicles, holding the earliest reliable Chinese record of Japan, the Wa people.

A complete Southern Song printing of the Book of the Later Han, kept in Sakura, whose account of the eastern peoples names Queen Himiko and an embassy of 57 CE.

A National Treasure near Tokyo: the Song-dynasty Shiji printed by Huang Shanfu, the oldest complete copy of the three-commentary edition, all 130 chapters intact.

Brushed in 1124, this is the oldest surviving Zen calligraphy. Cut in two long ago, its front half is National Treasure number one, the supreme tearoom scroll.

Discover the Matsuya Katatsuki, an Important Cultural Property of Japan — a Chinese-made shouldered tea caddy that passed through the hands of shoguns and tea masters for over 500 years. Now housed at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo's Aoyama district.

A small ink scroll the Chan master Xutang Zhiyu brushed near age eighty for a Japanese monk, slashed by a servant in 1637 and now a National Treasure in Tokyo.

Just 24.2 cm tall, this National Treasure at Tokyo's Nezu Museum is a peak of Southern Song bird-and-flower painting, attributed to Li Anzhong and shown only rarely.

Painted by the Song court artist Li Di and dated 1197, this National Treasure pairs a white and a red cotton rose, one flower as it shifts colour across a day.

A fan-shaped Song-dynasty painting of one apple branch, its blossoms ranging from bud to full bloom. Now a National Treasure at Tokyo's Ebara Hatakeyama Museum.

A National Treasure at the Tokyo National Museum: a Southern Song three-scroll set by Liang Kai of a gaunt Buddha and snowy peaks, held by the Ashikaga shoguns.