Shōwa

Completed in 1934 and designed by architect Yabe Matakichi, the former Kawasaki Savings Bank Fukushima Branch features a distinctive curved facade with Ionic giant-order columns. Now a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, it serves as the headquarters of Minami Corporation in Osaka's Fukushima district.

Fujii Koji designed this Korien house in 1930 for an Osaka textile merchant. It retains its ventilation flues, chair-height rooms and original furniture.

Only ten square metres, this storehouse was rebuilt in fire-resistant earthen-wall construction in 1941, in preparation for war. Its bracing records the period.

Thirteen square metres holding one room of four and a half mats, this outbuilding housed the Yagi family's live-in groom. Its south door faced the stable.

The gate and 22-metre board fence closing the north edge of the Yagi estate at Korien, designed by Fujii Koji to match the house behind it. Registered 2023.

A grand 1932 rice merchant's machiya on Kishiwada's old Kishū Kaidō, with a honkawara-tiled roof, a through-passage doma and rare koematsu pine fittings.

Completed in 1965 and designed by Kishida Hideto, the Riverside Building is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property standing along the Tosabori River in Nakanoshima, Osaka. Discover this exemplary International Style office building featuring an innovative highway overpass-inspired structure and continuous horizontal ribbon windows.

Behind a grand 1930 main house in Kishiwada, Osaka, this small lime-plastered storehouse reveals careful craft in its carved brackets and wrapped eave cornice.

At the Wada residence in old Kishiwada, an L-shaped wall divides the garden from the front approach. Built in 1930, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

Just 1.8 m wide, the Wada Residence's 1930 kitchen gate carries sukiya refinement: a gently curved tile roof and board-clad wing walls in the old castle town of Kishiwada, Osaka.

Sunori Bridge (水雲橋) is a stone two-arch bridge spanning the Era River in Innai-machi, Usa City, Oita Prefecture. Built in 1927 by master mason Matsuda Shinnosuke, it is the second-tallest stone bridge in Innai and features a distinctive asymmetric double-arch design. Registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2001, Sunori Bridge is a highlight of the Innai stone bridge trail in Japan's premier stone bridge town.

Takaiwa Bridge, located in Saito, Innai-machi, Usa City, Oita Prefecture, is a single stone arch bridge completed in 1928 by master mason Sato Hanjiro. With a 27-meter span, the longest of any stone arch in Innai, and a rare asymmetric segmental arch design finished with precisely dressed ashlar masonry, this nationally registered cultural property showcases the technical peak of Japan's traditional stone bridge craftsmanship.

Completed in 1957, Beppu Tower is one of the 'Tower Six Brothers' designed by Tachū Naitō, the legendary 'Tower Doctor,' and was the third high-rise tower built in postwar Japan — a year before Tokyo Tower. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2007 and renovated to its original 100-meter height in 2023, the tower offers 360-degree panoramic views of Beppu Bay, the steaming hot spring townscape, and the surrounding mountains from its 55-meter-high observation deck.

Saikai Bridge, spanning the Inoura Strait in Nagasaki Prefecture, is Japan's first strait-crossing bridge, completed in 1955. At the time, it was the third-longest fixed arch bridge in the world and was celebrated as the greatest in Asia. Built with outstanding design and construction techniques during post-war material shortages, it was designated as a national Important Cultural Property in 2020 — the first post-war bridge to receive this honor. The bridge is also a popular tourist destination for viewing dramatic whirlpools and cherry blossoms.

Located in the highlands of Unzen, Nagasaki Prefecture, the Unzen Kanko Hotel opened on October 10, 1935 as one of fifteen "national policy hotels" built across pre-war Japan to welcome foreign visitors. Designed and constructed by Takenaka Corporation, this Swiss chalet–style building of wood and partial reinforced concrete fuses Western and Japanese design idioms, and was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2003. Each of its three stories employs a different facing — local lava stone, half-logs, and half-timber — and as one of only nine members of the Japan Classic Hotel Association, it remains a living monument of early Showa-era hospitality at the heart of Japan's first national park.

Kanchōbashi is a 1954 Pony Warren truss steel bridge spanning the narrowest point of the Haiki Strait in Sasebo, Nagasaki. Standing at the site of Shionome, one of the celebrated Hirado Eight Scenic Views, visitors can witness powerful tidal currents rushing beneath the bridge. Fabricated at Mitsubishi's Nagasaki Shipyard and installed using an innovative tidal erection method, it was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2021.

Four courses of two-meter blocks with recessed edges, running twelve meters along a koi-filled spring channel in Shimabara. Registered in 2014, viewable any hour.

Built around 1935 in Shimabara's Shinmachi district, this 158-square-meter timber house turns its guest rooms toward a spring-fed garden. Registered in 2014.

A brick wall rising straight from the side masonry of a spring channel in Shimabara, thirty meters long and barely one brick thick, braced by piers every 2.4 meters.

Discover Magome Church (Church of Archangel Michael), a striking white Gothic church on Iojima Island in Nagasaki. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1931 by Hidden Christian descendants, featuring rib-vault ceilings and ocean views.