Shōwa

On the west of Heian Jingu's south court, the West Gate, or Shozenmon, and its L-shaped corridor enclose the court. Built in 1940, it mirrors the east side.

Behind Heian Jingu's sanctuary, the 1940 East Shinko is a small log storehouse about 3.6 meters square, its bare white wood standing out amid the vermilion precinct.

On the east of Heian Jingu's south court, the East Gate, or Senseimon, and its 50-meter corridor enclose the court, their vermilion frame and green lattice defining it.

Heian Jingu's South Walkway is a 1940 L-shaped passage tying the Soryuro and Byakkoro towers to the outer corridors, two bays wide with a latticed central wall.

Built in 1942 so the Konoe archive could be examined properly: a 393 m2 sukiya villa with the tea room Tekian, and the one Yomei Bunko building visitors enter.

The plainest of Yomei Bunko's four registered buildings, and the one that works: a 159 m2 wooden office with entrance lattice and a fireplace chimney.

Konoe Fumimaro raised this 73 m2 vault in 1938, before founding the archive itself: reinforced concrete disguised as a merchant's storehouse, lifted off the damp ground.

Two years after the First Repository, wartime shortages forced this 1940 vault to give up its raised floor. Its upper storey is where the treasures are shown.

Standing along Kyoto's celebrated Philosopher's Path near Ginkaku-ji, Restaurant Noa Noa occupies the former Western-style annex of the residence of Hashimoto Kansetsu (1883–1945), one of the leading Japanese-style painters of the Taisho and early Showa eras. Designed by Kansetsu himself and built around 1929 within his sprawling Hakusasonso estate, the modest two-storey reinforced-concrete building was conceived as a place to display his collection of Western antiquities. Its Spanish-style façade — graced with subtly Japanese rafter-shaped detailing on the entrance eaves — embodies a distinctive current of early-Showa residential design, and the property was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2005. Now serving European cuisine in the painter's original interiors and a leafy garden setting, Noa Noa offers visitors a uniquely atmospheric way to encounter a registered cultural property in the heart of eastern Kyoto.

The Kamowakeikazuchi Shrine Documents, designated as an Important Cultural Property, comprise 13,639 historical records spanning from the late Heian period to the Edo era. Preserved at Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto, this extraordinary archive includes decrees from Minamoto no Yoritomo, edicts from Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and approximately 1,400 consecutive monthly financial records—offering an unparalleled window into the history of one of Japan's most revered Shinto shrines.

Discover the Okawa Aso Shrine Rural Stage, a nationally registered tangible cultural property in Yamato, Kumamoto. This historic wooden stage is the birthplace of Seiwa Bunraku puppet theater, a tradition passed down since the Edo period.

Discover the Former Amakusa Education Hall Main Gate and Wall, a nationally registered tangible cultural property in Amakusa, Kumamoto. This 1934 reinforced concrete gate and wall showcase early Showa-era Western-influenced architecture on Japan's historic island archipelago.

Built in 1931 in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto, Shin-Onsen is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property — a rare wooden public bathhouse that survived the devastating 2020 floods and embodies the spirit of Japan's early Showa-era hot spring culture.

The Sagara-mura Furusato-kan in Sagara Village, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a two-storey wooden building originally constructed in 1942 as the office of the former Shiura Village and carefully relocated to its present site beside Sagara Onsen Sayuri in 2000. With its hipped tiled roof and generous bands of windows, it is a rare surviving example of early Showa-era rural Japanese government architecture, registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2007.

Takagi Clinic in the Kumfu district of Kikuchi City, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a wooden two-story medical building constructed in 1931 featuring a distinctive half-timber style facade. With its jerkinhead copper roof, dormer windows, and elegant Western-style entrance porch, the clinic preserves the atmosphere of early Showa-era Kikuchi and was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2013.

The Japanese Evangelical Lutheran Kumamoto Church, located in central Kumamoto City, is a wooden church designed by architect William Merrell Vories in 1950. Featuring a hammer-beam truss roof, pointed-arch openings, and a spired corner tower, this Gothic-inspired timber structure was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2019. A symbol of postwar reconstruction beloved by the local community, it stands as one of Vories's final architectural masterworks.

A brick water tower at Kumamoto's Hamada Shoyu, built around 1950 and still pumping the well water used to make its soy sauce, rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake.

About 8 square meters, the Hamada Shoyu Yokan is a 1930s former tobacco shop with Western detailing, set at a long-running soy sauce brewery in Kumamoto.

A 1933 timber inn entrance on the Kuma River in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto, registered in 2013. See its hip-and-gable porch, courtyard glass doors, and post-flood revival.

The 1933 central building of Hitoyoshi Ryokan, a riverside hot-spring inn in Kumamoto, with four rooms per floor and varied wooden lattice, now registered heritage.