Meiji

Shogenji Hondo in Hakone began around 1904 as banker Imamura Shigezo's villa, was moved here in 1932, and became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2002.

Ugajinja, in the far north of the Yugyo-ji precinct, is a shrine of just 3.6 square metres yet dense with carving, the smallest of the temple's ten registered structures.

Reached by a corridor behind the Obankata, Yugyo-ji's Small Shoin served official duties and guest receptions, its two rows of rooms ending in alcove-fitted inner rooms.

Yugyo-ji's Somon is a large black gate about 7.2 metres tall, the local Kuromon, facing the old Tokaido at Fujisawa-juku. Registered with its walls for landscape value.

The pavilion before Yugyo-ji's Main Hall is a single open bay dense with carving, from openwork beam-ends to animals among the brackets. It is early Meiji work.

A village headman's silk-rearing farmhouse of 1875, moved to Hakone in 1953 and registered in 2001, Hakone Kowakien Geihinkan keeps its raised sericulture roofline.

Made in England in 1888 for the Tōkaidō line and re-erected over a Hakone gorge in 1917, this lattice truss still carries trains 43 metres above the river.

Tucked behind the Hanagoten wing of the Fujiya Hotel in Hakone-Miyanoshita, the Aerie is the oldest surviving building on the property. Built in 1884 as the first reconstruction after the great Miyanoshita fire of 1883, it already shows the signature Fujiya design of symmetrical corner projections and a central karahafu porch — the prototype for the later Main Building and Western Annexes. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 1997, it stands as one of the very few surviving examples of Japan's earliest resort-hotel architecture.

Built in 1897 so Yokohama could stop pumping, this Doshi River intake pairs a 4.6-metre cobble-packed iron grille with two Glasgow-made pipes. Registered 1998.

A 34.2-metre concrete square above the Doshi River, this 1897 basin let silt drop out before water reached the Kawai and Nogeyama plants. Registered 1998.

Built in 1881 and moved to Ryukoji in 1969, this open bell tower has inward-leaning round posts, packed Zen-style brackets and a bell any visitor may ring by day.

A National Treasure at Yokohama's Kanazawa Bunko: 16,692 Buddhist scriptures and 4,149 medieval documents from the Kanazawa Hojo library and the temple of Shomyoji.

The Former Ominato Waterworks in Mutsu, Aomori, built by the navy in 1902 to 1910 and designated in 2009, keep a stone arch dam and brick tank in Suigenchi Park.

Built in 1907 by banker Tsushima Gen'emon, this 19-room wooden mansion in Kanagi, Aomori, is novelist Dazai Osamu's birthplace and an Important Cultural Property.

Standing on the northeastern tip of Honshu, Shiriyazaki Lighthouse is a graceful brick tower designed by British engineer Richard Henry Brunton and first lit in 1876. As Tōhoku's earliest Western-style lighthouse and Japan's tallest active brick lighthouse at 32.8 meters, it pioneered the country's first fog signal and first electric beacon. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2022, the lighthouse sits within a windswept moorland where Aomori's natural-monument Kandachime horses graze, where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tsugaru Strait.

A 1904 timber bank in Hirosaki, Aomori, an Important Cultural Property since 1972, the masterpiece of local carpenter Horie Sakichi, with a central lookout.

The Hirosaki Gakuin Foreign Missionary House, built in 1906 for Methodist women missionaries, is an Important Cultural Property with an octagonal spire.

Ishiba Ryokan in Hirosaki, Aomori, an inn of 1879, sets two hip-and-gable wings in a staggered line, its glass and balustrades bearing the name of the house.

Built in 1897 for the Izumiyama family of Hachinohe, this Aomori house borrows shrine carpentry for its porch and gained a daylit reception wing in 1919.

Sataki Bunko-gura in Sannohe, Aomori, is a black-plastered storehouse of 1893, the oldest building on the plot. An ink inscription fixes its month of completion.