Muromachi
室町Browse Japan’s cultural heritage from the Muromachi period (1336 – 1573). Filter by prefecture, type, and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
Inside the main hall at Mashiko in Tochigi stands a black-lacquered miniature shrine inscribed 1394, though its carving has also been read as work of the 1490s.
This thatched two-storied gate at Mashiko in Tochigi dates to the 1490s. Its columns are cut with thirty-two facets and Chinese-style brackets carry the balustrade.
Jizoin Main Hall in Mashiko, Tochigi, dated to about 1542 and listed in 1916, is the Amida hall of a lost Utsunomiya clan temple. The interior is normally closed.
Built in 1527, Ōkura Shrine's main hall is a small single-bay thatched structure beside Tsuna Shrine in Mashiko, Tochigi, and an Important Cultural Property.
Tsuna Shrine's thatched main hall in Mashiko, Tochigi, is a Muromachi building tied to exiled lord Utsunomiya Asatsuna, an Important Cultural Property since 1916.
The main hall of Murahi Shrine in Tochigi is a late Muromachi kasuga-style hall of three bays under cypress bark, at a shrine linked to Fujiwara no Hidesato.
A middle Muromachi hall at Uda Mikumari Shrine, Nara, repeating the sumigi-iri Kasuga form of the 1320 main hall at a smaller scale for a deity from Kasuga Taisha.
The only nagare-style hall among the five medieval halls of Uda Mikumari Shrine, Nara: a late Muromachi subordinate hall showing the long slope of its roof in front.
A stone five-ring memorial to warlord Tsutsui Junsho at Enshoji in Ikoma, carved with his name, his death date in 1550 and Sanskrit letters on each face.
The Amida hall of Enjoji in the hills east of Nara, rebuilt in 1472 on the plan of the Heian hall lost in 1466, with a stage on its front deck and painted pillars.
The main hall of Enshoji in Ikoma, built in 1552 for the memorial temple of warlord Tsutsui Junsho: a plain square hall moved here from central Nara city.
The vermilion gate of Enjoji near Nara, rebuilt in 1468 and designated in 1906, with an Amida seed syllable carved on the front and a peony on the back.
The main hall of Enpukuji in the Ikoma hills, dated to 1371 by ink on its altar wall frame, with shutters across its front and six groups of old parts kept with it.
Once the main hall of Daigorinji, Omiwa Shrine's Buddhist temple, this tiled hall keeps a Nara-period inner sanctum and early Kamakura outer space in one building.
Kikō-ji's main hall in Nara, said to have modeled Tōdai-ji's Great Buddha Hall, is a tiered Muromachi rebuilding of 1544 housing a late-Heian seated Amida triad.
The Kitamuroin Front Gate, a late Muromachi bark-roofed hira-karamon of a Horyuji sub-temple, is older than the Saionin Karamon and stands with the hall it guards.
The Kitamuroin Main Hall, built in 1494 in a Horyuji sub-temple, is a small square hall with a cypress-bark roof, one of a series of dated small halls at the temple.
Dated 1463 by an inscription on its central pillar, Kichiden-ji's tahoto in Ikaruga is Nara's oldest surviving two-storied pagoda, with a hidden Dainichi inside.
The Niōmon of Kinpusenji Temple in Yoshinoyama, Nara, is a towering two-story medieval gateway rebuilt in 1456. Standing over 20 meters tall, it is one of Japan's largest temple gates, designated a National Treasure and a core component of the UNESCO World Heritage site "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range." Uniquely, it faces north—the opposite direction of the main hall—to welcome pilgrims arriving from Kyoto and Osaka toward the sacred mountains. The gate is currently undergoing its first major restoration in seventy years, with completion scheduled for fiscal year 2028.
The main hall of Koizumi Shrine in Yamatokoriyama, Nara, is a one-bay kasuga-style hall of the late Muromachi period, under cypress bark, protected since 1920.