Shōwa
昭和Browse Japan’s cultural heritage from the Shōwa period (1926 – 1989). Filter by prefecture, type, and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
The Soto Zen head temple founded by Dogen in 1244 in Fukui, whose 15 halls dating from 1647 to 1930 became an Important Cultural Property in 2019 as a group.
The former Owada Bank head office in Tsuruga, Fukui, a brick bank of 1927 with rooms for public use, is an Important Cultural Property and now the city museum.
The Aizanso Stone Storehouse in Echizen, Fukui, was built in 1936 of local Shakudani stone, with iron doors and a steel roof truss. Registered in 2017 at Aizanso.
The Aizanso Kura Zashiki in Echizen, Fukui, is a 1928 storehouse with a hinoki reception room, washed-aggregate walls and scrolled steel brackets. Registered 2017.
The Aizanso Tea House in Echizen, Fukui, is a four-and-a-half-mat tea room of about 1928 mixing fine timber with bark-on red pine and bamboo. Registered in 2017.
The Aizanso Waiting Arbor in Echizen, Fukui, is a 3.0-metre tea-garden bench of about 1928, with a long-sloped roof and lattice window angled to the garden.
The smallest registered building at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, this 1956 shed made the wooden crates that carried fine paper to painters nationwide.
Kogura, a 1949 two-story plaster dozo at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, once dried the oversized handmade sheets the mill is celebrated for.
The 1952 Fiber-Boiling House at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui, is where kozo, mitsumata, gampi and hemp are boiled and cleaned to begin papermaking.
The 1953 Stretching and Drying Hall at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui dried pressed sheets on boards under a wide truss-spanned room, the final step.
The 1953 Beater House at the Iwano Heizaburo Paper Mill in Echizen, Fukui cleaned and beat plant fiber into even pulp under a king-post truss lit by ribbon windows.
On the platform opposite the station building at Katsuyama, this early Showa timber shelter keeps its open front and exposed wagoya roof frame. Registered in 2004.
Rebuilt around 1937 on ground above the village it serves, the Shiizakai station building keeps a plain sheet-metal roof and decoration at just two points.
Built for the opening of the Mikuni Awara Electric Railway in December 1928, the Honjo station building keeps its off-centre porch and original entrance decoration.
The second station building at Matsuoka, put up around 1933, carries a steep half-hipped roof, a round window in the gable and posts cut from disused rail.
At the edge of Fukui City, this 1928 station building uses rail as posts under its porch and canopy, and is said to have survived the Fukui earthquake of 1948.
The former Kyoto Dento branch office in Takahama, Fukui, a timber building of 1931 in beige mortar, has a symmetrical front with a balcony and arched windows.
The Tsuruga Warehouse Shinko Warehouses of 1933 at the centre of Tsuruga Port are concrete stores whose canopies and tiled corner echo the International Style.
The Former Nakanata Post Office in the hills of Obama, Fukui, is a timber post office of about 1936 with painted clapboard, a gabled porch and a tatami room above.
The Former Negishi Family Residence Front Gate in Echizen, Fukui, is an early Showa timber gate 3.9 metres wide, set past a waterway bridge, with a lavatory added.