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.
A concrete book store of c. 1947 on the Kajiwara estate in Oshio, Himeji: the newest of its 20 registered buildings, with a tiled roof and a slatted floor.
A 1953 municipal apartment block in Ashiya, Hyogo, built of Nikkaseki tuff laid in courses alternating with concrete block. Its eight units now hold studios.
A 1929 telephone exchange in Ashiya, Hyogo, by ministry architect Uenami Akira. Two-tone scratch tile, an arcaded north wall, lion reliefs; now a restaurant.
Completed in 1938 on the inner bailey of Amagasaki Castle, this three-story concrete school rings a courtyard. Registered in 2024, it is now the city history museum.
Built in 1927 and registered in 2024, this Amagasaki school gate spans four meters of concrete clad in roughly worked stone, with thin pyramidal caps on its posts.
Registered in August 2025, this 35-square-metre early Showa tea house on the Otemae University campus in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, is said to copy Kyoto's Hanshoan.
A 1927 concrete clubhouse built by Hyogo merchants in Kobe, registered in 2018, and since June 2026 the free exhibition annex of the Kobe City Historical Archives.
A 1940 service gate in Himeji leading to the kitchen door, pairing log posts and carved braces with sliding glazed doors and a lit bamboo transom. Registered 2022.
A 1930 Himeji tea house: a six-mat room under a bamboo-blind boat-bottom ceiling, wide shoji to the garden, a path led indoors. Named by Tantansai. Registered 2022.
A birthing hall built about 1935 for Princess Kaya's confinement in Himeji, later moved here: two tatami rooms and a glazed, railed veranda. Registered in 2022.
A 1930 tea-garden privy in Himeji, 0.9 m² with a corner cut for its door, an asymmetric cedar-bark roof, rust-toned clay walls and a lattice window. Registered 2022.
A 1940 house in Himeji by architect Ebihara Ichiro, pairing a slate-paved porch and strip-windowed Western parlour with sukiya-style tatami rooms. Registered 2022.
A 1930 waiting pavilion for tea guests in Himeji: tiled bench, entry, three-mat room and preparation area in 17 m², with a cedar-bark eave and smoked-bamboo ceiling.
A 1930 tea preparation house in Himeji: six-mat room, earth-floored work area, privy and storeroom, clad in cedar bark to the garden and boards to the street.
A 1930 bracket gate in Himeji leading guests to the tea garden, with knotted log posts, adze-carved braces, polished-log purlins and bamboo rafters. Registered 2022.
The former Maya hotel on Mount Maya above Kobe, built in 1930, has curving walls wrapped in canopies and an Art Deco interior that recall a vanished mountain resort.
The former Yamatoya Ryokan of 1927 on Yunosato-dori in Kinosaki Onsen, Hyogo, a narrow three-storey inn, fronts the hot spring street with glass doors and railings.
The smallest of five registered structures at a 1930s Nishinomiya villa by Okada Takao: a timber gatehouse of nineteen square metres with a stone-faced side gate.
An early Showa well in the Kusaka garden in Awaga, Asago: granite blocks notched into a square curb 0.7 metres across over a 4.1-metre shaft, edged with fieldstone.
An early Showa front gate at the Kusaka house in Hibarigaoka, Takarazuka: doorless concrete posts 0.7 metres high in pebble finish, an open entrance from the street.