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.
A c.1881 white-plastered storehouse at the Mushakoji Senke tea school in Kyoto, with a tiled gable roof, three layered doors and two round windows. Registered 2004.
Built in 1900 and relocated by hikiya in 1971, this southeast storehouse in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto was registered in 2007. Its white gable closes a street view.
Between the Raku family's main house and main storehouse in Kyoto: a two-storey earthen store with stepped, fire-tight doors and a 6-mat anteroom. Registered 2007.
The Raku potters' gate on Aburanokoji Street, Kyoto: 4.5 metres of sliding lattice doors and wainscoted earthen walls under a tiled gable. Registered 2007.
Behind the Raku family's Kyoto home, a small clay-lined shed holds the wood-fired red Raku kiln and the black Raku kiln, both registered in 2007 with the building.
Beside the Raku potters' gate in Kyoto, a 4.6 square metre shelter where tea guests wait: a bench inside, a lattice window to the street, a privy. Registered 2007.
The two-storey heart of the Raku potters' home in Kyoto: 11 by 7 bays, a plain townhouse front hiding sukiya-style rooms. Registered in 2007; interior is private.
In the far corner of the Raku potters' compound in Kyoto, a slate-roofed shed on brick footings where tea-bowl clay is stored and pounded. Registered 2007; private.
South of the Raku potters' gate in Kyoto, a 3.0 square metre shelter where guests' attendants once waited, with a bench and a lattice window. Registered in 2007.
North-west of the Raku family's main house in Kyoto, a two-storey plastered storehouse with an Inari shrine built into its eave and the kiln house against its wall.
Rakurakuso Nihonkan is railway magnate Tanaka Gentaro's 1898 shoin hall in Kameoka, with master and wife rooms showing peak Meiji carpentry above Ueji's pond garden.
The Rakurakuso Western-Style Building in Kameoka, Kyoto Prefecture, was completed around 1898 by Shimizu-gumi as the residence of industrialist and Kyoto Railway founder Tanaka Gentaro. This two-story brick mansion, listed as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property, features distinctive verandas on its east and south façades and richly varied interiors where each room boasts a different fireplace and floor design — a rare and remarkably complete example of late-Meiji domestic architecture, surviving alongside its companion Japanese Hall, Entrance, and a celebrated stroll garden by Ogawa Jihei VII.
On Shinmachi-dōri south of Nishi Hongan-ji, this Meiji-era machiya pairs three lattice patterns on its façade with an inner courtyard. Registered in 2008.
Behind the Raku potters' main house in Kyoto, a tiny sukiya building pairs a 3-mat tea room with a family altar room on round-log posts. Registered 2007; private.
Discover the National Treasure bokuseki calligraphy by Chinese Chan master Xutang Zhiyu, preserved at Daitoku-ji temple in Kyoto. Learn about its Zen heritage, tea ceremony significance, and how to view this masterpiece.
Japan's oldest surviving electric tram (1911), from its first public electric railway. Now an Important Cultural Property freely viewable at Heian Shrine.
A National Treasure of Shōjōke-in, Kyoto: a Southern Song Amida triad in three signed scrolls by the Ningbo painter Fuetsu, now held at the Kyoto National Museum.
Ninna-ji's National Treasure Kujaku Myōō, a Song-dynasty Chinese painting, shows the Peacock Wisdom King with three faces and six arms on a white peacock.
Two Southern Song scrolls at Kyoto's Konchi-in, the Autumn and Winter Landscapes are a National Treasure once owned by the Ashikaga shoguns and ascribed to Huizong.
Two Southern Song ink landscapes attributed to Li Tang at Kotoin, Daitokuji, Kyoto, a National Treasure since 1952; the temple is closed in 2026.