Shōwa

The only building Le Corbusier designed in Japan, opened in 1959. Its pilotis, central hall and spiral ramp embody his concept of a Museum of Unlimited Growth.

Completed in 1933 and extended by a second architect until 1965, this Nihombashi store was Japan's first department store designated an Important Cultural Property.

Completed in 1937 in Ueno Park, Tokyo, and designated an Important Cultural Property in 2001, this tile-roofed concrete building is the Tokyo National Museum Honkan.

Standing in stately proportion at the heart of Nihonbashi-Muromachi, the Mitsui Main Building is one of Tokyo's most magnificent surviving works of early Showa-era architecture. Completed in 1929 as the headquarters of the prewar Mitsui zaibatsu, it was designed by the New York firm Trowbridge & Livingston in a confident American Beaux-Arts neoclassical style. Towering Corinthian columns line three street facades, and a vast marble banking hall on the first floor embodies the design ideals of "Grandeur, Dignity, and Simplicity" set out by managing director Dan Takuma. In 1998 it became the first large multi-tenant office building in Japan to receive Important Cultural Property status. Today the seventh floor houses the Mitsui Memorial Museum, displaying six National Treasures and dozens of further masterpieces from three centuries of the Mitsui family collection.

A 1927 steel and concrete department store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, an Important Cultural Property since 2016, with a classical facade and an Art Deco atrium.

Meiji Seimeikan in Marunouchi, completed 1934, was the first Showa-era building listed as an Important Cultural Property. Its Corinthian colonnade faces the moat.

Built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and made an Important Cultural Property in 2021, Yoyogi National Stadium hangs its roof from cables slung between two 40m masts.

Standing at the heart of Aoyama Gakuin University's campus in Shibuya, Tokyo, Berry Hall was completed in 1931 as the new School of Theology building, the final phase of recovery from the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. This three-story reinforced concrete Neo-Gothic structure honors Dean Arthur D. Berry, who led the American fundraising campaign for its construction. Inside, the Charles Oscar Miller Memorial Chapel houses a 1932 German Walcker pipe organ — believed to be the oldest of its maker still in active use in Japan — and inspired the famous Showa-era song 'Student Days.' Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2008.

An early Showa house in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with a Japanese wing of rare woods and a Western wing of French tiles, rustication and scratch tile. Registered in 2013.

The Igusa Kindergarten Building in Suginami, Tokyo, is a 1933 timber schoolhouse with an L-shaped plan around its hall. Registered in 2017, it is still in daily use.

The Ikegami Family Residence in Setagaya, Tokyo, is a 1932 Western-style house with Spanish tiles, a sunroom and Art Deco rooms. Registered in 2006; a private home.

Registered in 2018, Isago Family Nagaya is a five-unit timber row house of c.1932 on the Kishimojin approach in Zoshigaya, Tokyo, with an ochre metal-banded front.

Registered in 2010, Iseya Shop and Residence is a small 1927 timber shop-house in Nihonzutsumi, Tokyo, still a tempura shop, its gable facing a vanished embankment.

Issuiryo on a back street of Kagurazaka, Tokyo, a carpenters' dormitory of about 1951, shows chisel and adze work on its lattices and beams in the postwar townscape.

The North Wing of Imahan Annex in Asakusa, Tokyo, built in about 1950, has a kitchen below and banquet rooms above, with a grand alcove and a phoenix-carved ceiling.

The entrance building of Imahan Annex in Asakusa, Tokyo, a timber restaurant of about 1950, sits back from the lane under a hip-and-gable roof with two rooms inside.

The South Wing of Imahan Annex in Asakusa, Tokyo, built in about 1950, is an L-shaped two-storey guest wing whose rooms use choice timber in ceilings and transoms.

The Imahan Honten North Inner Zashiki, about 1956, is the youngest wing behind an Asakusa sukiyaki house: three rooms noted for kumiko lattice and woven ceilings.

The Imahan Honten West Inner Zashiki, built about 1951 behind an Asakusa sukiyaki house, has three rooms named for and lined with Kasuga, Yoshino and Jindai cedar.

The Imahan Honten East Inner Zashiki, about 1951, is the largest wing behind an Asakusa sukiyaki house: Pine, Bamboo and Plum rooms that open into one banquet hall.