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.
The Onsen Onyado Ryugon Main Building in Minamiuonuma is an early Meiji farmhouse moved here in 1969, with projecting chumon wings, now part of the inn ryugon.
The Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall at Inari Shrine, Kuzutsuka, Niigata City, built 1871 and moved 1969, honors the market's founders and has a porch shaped like a torii.
Kappo Tochu Ue-no-kura in Ojiya, Niigata, is a Meiji-era storehouse whose ground floor became a billiard room before the war. It was registered in 2015.
A late Meiji two-storey pavilion on a rise at the Kansuiro inn in Agano, Niigata, with wraparound verandas, a classic alcove and glass doors. Registered in 2021.
Built in 1910 in Niigata's Furumachi quarter, the front wing of the former restaurant Ariake keeps a curved porch and a second floor overhanging the alley.
Shaped natural stones stacked six courses and capped with coping form the wall framing the Kina saffron sake compound and giving Nagaoka's Settaya a street-side face.
Standing alone at the north of the grounds, this storehouse is the oldest survivor from when brewing began here, its gable shaped into the character for good fortune.
Behind a heavy gabled porch and its old saffron-sake signboard, the 469-square-metre timber main house in Nagaoka opens for guided visits on weekends and holidays.
The Gyokusendo Store in Tsubame is a late-Meiji shop registered in 2008 for its design. Tatami rooms line an earth-floored passage, and it still sells copper.
Just fifteen square metres, this 1877 storehouse adjoins a soy sauce works. Note the set-on tiled roof, notched weatherboarding and black plaster window frames.
A registered Meiji house in Sekiya, Niigata, raised after the Boshin War burned its predecessor in 1868. Exposed gable framing, bold beams, shoin rooms. Not open.
An 1882 earthen-walled kura beside the Nakanokuchi River, set on high ground against flood. Heavy rafters, close-set posts. Registered 2023. Privately held.
A small detached room of middle Meiji date, open south onto a garden. Shoin alcove, tokonoma, a round tea hearth in the floor. Registered 2023. Not open.
The oldest of the five Sakata buildings in Gosen, Niigata, dating to early Meiji. Small but soundly built, its black-plastered openings open the estate's history.
The office building of Sasaiwai Sake Brewery in Niigata, built about 1901, shows a grand gabled front to the old highway, with a shop below and brewers' rooms above.
The brick chimney of Sasaiwai Sake Brewery in Niigata, built in the late Meiji era, is a 12-metre hexagonal shaft in English bond and a landmark of the area.
The main gate of Jigenji in Ojiya, Niigata, built in about 1892, is carved with waves, cranes and dragons; the temple is known for the failed peace talks of 1868.
The Shuseian storehouse in Ojiya, Niigata, an early Meiji two-storey store moved from a local family house, is built of heavy timbers to stand up to the snow.
Sesonji Temple Shoin on Sado Island, linked to the Main Hall by a corridor, has four tatami rooms under a tall hip-and-gable roof and was registered in 2006.
Sesonji Temple Main Hall on Sado, begun in 1892 and finished in 1907, is a large Nichiren hall of 301 square meters, registered as a cultural property in 2006.