Shōwa

This 1929 laboratory pairs brick tile and arched windows with a plainer upper floor, its central entrance crowned by stained glass, in Sendai's Katahira Campus.

Completed in 1927, this concrete building with herringbone brick tilework survived the 1945 air raids as the last Faculty of Law and Letters building.

Built in 1932 and extended in 1935, this scratch-tile building with vertical piers and a stone entrance now serves as Tohoku University's headquarters.

The Former Marumori Post Office in Miyagi Prefecture, completed in 1935, is a wooden two-story Western-style building registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2009. Its scratch-tile ground floor, pebble-dash upper story, and dentil-decorated parapet capture the early-Showa fashion for modernist architecture as it reached small provincial towns. Together with the nearby Sairi Yashiki estate, it offers a window into the layered history of Marumori, a quiet town tucked along the Abukuma River.

Discover Shojiya Soy Sauce Shop in Sendai's Hachiman district, a 1936 segai-zukuri merchant building registered as a national tangible cultural property, still producing traditional Sendai miso since the late Edo period.

Discover the Shinya Abe Family Residence Retirement House (Inkyo-ya), a nationally registered tangible cultural property built in 1954 on Tashiro-jima, Miyagi Prefecture's famous Cat Island. This charming two-story wooden building reflects the prosperity and aesthetics of a traditional fishing family.

The Mikoshi-den at Tsushima Shrine in Tome City, Miyagi, was donated in 1928 together with the mikoshi itself by Sato Tetsuro, operator of the Sanuma Railway. It marked the end of a decade-long reconstruction after the catastrophic 1912 fire, and in 2024 it was added to Japan's national register of tangible cultural properties alongside the shrine's main and worship halls.

Completed in 1953, this five-story reinforced concrete former university library is a fine example of postwar modernist architecture, cleverly designed with tall narrow windows to appear as a three-story building. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2014, it stands on the Tsuchitoi Campus of Tohoku Gakuin University in Sendai, forming part of a historic academic ensemble with the Main Hall and Chapel.

Built in 1930, the United Church of Christ in Japan Iwanuma Church is the only surviving historic stone church in Miyagi Prefecture. Featuring locally quarried tuff walls, Gothic-inspired pointed-arch windows, and an elegant hammerbeam roof, this Registered Tangible Cultural Property tells the story of early Protestant evangelism in the Tohoku region.

This 16-meter brick chimney marks the Moritami Sake Brewery in Iwadeyama. Laid in English bond with a band of over-burnt brick, it vented the boiler house nearby.

Discover Yusaya Ryokan, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Naruko Onsen, Miyagi Prefecture. Founded in 1632, this wooden inn preserves Edo-era architecture and offers the legendary Unagi-yu hot spring. A must-visit for cultural heritage travelers.

Dedicated in 1932, the Rauhauzer Memorial Tohoku Gakuin Chapel is a Collegiate Gothic reinforced concrete chapel designed by American architect J. H. Morgan. Highlights include its Akiu stone exterior, Japan's only surviving stained glass window by England's Heaton, Butler & Bayne workshop, and a majestic interior seating approximately 900. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2014.

A small tea house on Kaga Shotaro's Oyamazaki estate, its table-style tea seat doubling as a Buddhist chapel, opened only for seasonal tea gatherings.

A tiny teahouse on Kaga Shotaro's estate, a log-framed room projecting over a stone base set into the slope, a deft blend of West and Japan. Not normally open.

By the worship hall stands Amino Shrine's offering hall, an early-Showa building where offerings for the deities are prepared, plain but carefully made.

Wrapping around the main hall of Amino Shrine, this thirty-metre early-Showa openwork fence is solid below and latticed above, ringing the sacred inner ground.

Beside the approach to Amino Shrine stands its ablution pavilion, built in 1943 to mark the shrine's promotion to prefectural rank, open on all sides under a copper roof.

A short covered corridor linking the worship hall to the main hall of Amino Shrine, built around 1929. Its thin brackets and curved rafters show a delicate touch.

Spanning the Yura River in Ayabe, Kyoto, the Ayabe Ohashi Bridge is a 210-metre seven-span steel curved-chord Warren truss bridge completed in 1929. Designated a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005, it remains in active service as a road bridge and stands as a rare and beautiful example of early-Showa civil engineering.

Rising from the wooded foothills of Ayabe in northern Kyoto, Oomoto Mirokuden is a vast 789-tatami sanctuary completed in 1953 on the site of an earlier hall lost to wartime suppression. A registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan since 2014, its pillar-less interior, layered copper-shingled irimoya roof, and surrounding gardens make it one of the great twentieth-century religious buildings of Japan.