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.
The 1928 main hall of Kijo Elementary School in Kariya, Aichi, is a reinforced-concrete building by Onaka Hajime on the old castle grounds, now a free local museum.
Built in 1938 on a crossroads corner of Inuyama's old castle town, this timber merchant house keeps the narrow deep plot form and a passage open to the roof above.
Along the west and south of the Kawarada Residence in Nagoya runs a concrete retaining wall faced with coursed Oya stone, capped and crowned with a clipped hedge.
At the south edge of the Kawarada Residence in Nagoya, a 1938 tiled wall steps down the slope in three stages to a recessed sliding-door gate with carved transoms.
At the cut northwest corner of the Kawarada Residence in Nagoya, a 1938 bracket-arm gate and tiled earthen wall form the formal street face of a Showa garden house.
Kawarada Family Residence Main Building, in Nagoya's Showa Ward, dates from 1937. Registered in 2020 with its gates and Oya stone wall, it covers 144 square meters.
The Former Head Office of Kankyo Mirin in Kanie, Aichi Prefecture, is a 1937 reinforced-concrete office building registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan. As the first RC structure ever built in Kanie Town, this elegant Showa-era landmark features scratch-tile walls and terracotta entrance trim along the Kanie River.
Just 910 millimetres wide, this early Showa garden gate in Okazaki sets a cedar bark roof on adzed hexagonal posts and closes the view east from the reception room.
A 1927 rural clinic at Ouma in Toyokawa, Aichi, registered in 2004. A porte cochere and name board sit on its symmetrical west front. Exterior viewing only.
A concrete washing fixture of 1927 in the front garden of a rural clinic at Ouma in Toyokawa, Aichi. Patients washed here before entering. Registered 2004.
The 1927 inpatient wing of a rural clinic at Ouma in Toyokawa, Aichi, registered in 2004. Three six-mat rooms and board verandas sit behind a Western front.
A 1929 reinforced-concrete water tower at the former Okada Clinic in Chita, Aichi, stored well water for the clinic and home before piped water reached the town.
A Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Okada: a small 1931 storehouse from an army doctor's clinic in the historic home of Chita cotton, near Nagoya.
Built in 1929 by a retired army surgeon, the Former Okada Clinic in Chita joins a tiled roof to a Western truss and colored-glass transoms. Registered 2015.
A 1929 doctor's clinic in Okada, an old cotton town in Chita. A registered cultural property of mixed Western and Japanese design, now a working weaving workshop.
In Chita's old cotton town of Okada, this small 1929 storehouse served a retired army surgeon's clinic. Its street facade mimics cut stone; registered in 2015.
A registered 1929 wall in Chita, Aichi: 33 meters of arched reinforced concrete on a stone base, framing a doctor's compound within an old cotton-town streetscape.
A tiny 1929 hoanden in the grounds of Sanjo Shrine, Ichinomiya: concrete shaped like wood, built to hold the Emperor's portrait. It survived postwar demolition.
Near Nagoya, the north high wall of the former Kato residence doubles as a side eave of the main house, with lattice windows above for light. Registered in 1999.
An early Showa reception wing in Kitanagoya, Aichi, linked to the main house by a covered passage. Ten and eight mat rooms, a tea room with a convex roof.