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.
Built in 1933 in Hojo, Tsukuba, this wooden 2-storey former post office keeps its geometric porch and boarded walls. Registered in 2015; now used as a cafe.
Built in 1927 as a Daigoju Bank branch on Makabe's busiest corner, this 83 square meter building was a post office from 1956 to 1986 and registered in 2000.
A 58 m single-storey wooden school of 1950 in the hills of Daigo, Ibaraki, with a gabled central porch and two tiers of windows; closed in 1996 and reused locally.
Former Watanabe Jinkichi Residence Main House is a 1934 Tudor house moved from Tokyo to Toride and registered in 2023. Open only on irregular booked days.
A two-storey timber shop-house of about 1932 in Ishioka, Ibaraki, with deep eaves and a symmetrical front, recalling the town rebuilt after the 1929 fire.
A shop of 1928 on the old Shimodate highway at Iizuka in Makabe, Sakuragawa, registered in 2003. Hipped roofs, a deep lean-to, glass doors of the early Showa years.
The Jushichiya footwear shop of 1930 in Ishioka, Ibaraki, is a kanban-style building whose flat front has tall windows and a Lombard band below the eaves.
The Sugaya Cosmetics Store in Ishioka, Ibaraki, is a timber shop-house of 1930 whose front is dressed with classical pilasters, a dentilled cornice and a pediment.
Tsuchiura Civic Hall, registered in 2024, is a 1969 hall by the acoustician Sato Takeo, with a colonnaded south entrance front and a curved-walled main auditorium.
The Degawa Family Residence Stone Storehouse of 1937 in Makabe, Sakuragawa, is 6.7 metres long in granite 325 millimetres thick, its long walls dressed edokiri.
The Degawa Family Residence Main House, a 1937 town house in Makabe, Sakuragawa, was registered in 2005. Its 1951 pharmacy front took a shallow hood, not a shop eave
The Nakabashi Bridge of 1937 in Hitachiota, Ibaraki, a concrete arch known as the Spectacles Bridge, is an early Lohse bridge and rare north of the Kanto region.
The Anglican chapel of Saint Barnabas in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki, built in 1930 west of the castle ruins, has concrete walls, timber trusses and an octagonal bell tower.
A 1932 concrete gallery wing of the Bakumatsu and Meiji Museum in Oarai, Ibaraki, with windowless faux-stone walls, pilasters, dentils and Corinthian-style columns.
A wooden inn built in 1929 on a street corner in Makabe, Sakuragawa City. Its entrance canopy, wide upper openings and balustrade mark the trade. Registered 2002.
An early Showa timber house in Makabe, Sakuragawa City, registered 2004. Boarded walls, plaster on the street front alone, hipped tiled roof; exterior viewing only.
Raised around 1930 after a fire razed central Ishioka, this two-storey timber shophouse fronts Nakamachi-dori with scratch-tile pilasters. Registered in 2004.
Built in 1928 and spared by the fire that levelled Ishioka a year later, this artificial-stone shopfront is the town's oldest signboard building and still trades.
Built in 1931 on Ishioka's Nakamachi Street, this sugar shop wears the heavy roof of a traditional merchant house, yet its black wall is concrete, not plaster.
The kokugura at Fuchu Homare in Ishioka, Ibaraki, is a wood-frame concrete rice store recording the fire-resistant methods adopted after the great fire of 1929.