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 Toishi Hachiman Shrine Offering Hall of 1940 joins sanctuary to worship hall in Shunan, Yamaguchi, with a split floor, stepped roof and ground glass shutters.
The Toishi Hachiman Shrine Main Hall in Shunan, Yamaguchi is a three-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuary of 1940, rebuilt after a fire and covering 39 square meters.
Nagao Hachiman Shrine Miyuki Bridge on Suo-Oshima: an arched bridge of 1937 over a fire-reservoir pond, with stone parapets carved in a quince-flower motif.
Wooden Western-style village office of 1928 in Ube, Yamaguchi, with the assembly hall upstairs, a rare survivor in the prefecture, now a sake brewery's office.
Memorial hall of 1937 in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, built beside the site of the 1895 peace talks in the Imperial Crown style; it displays the conference chairs.
A 1938 timber church above the Kanmon Strait in Shimonoseki, registered in 2004, with a Spanish-style front of white walls, red tiles and a tower, still in use.
Concrete house of 1936 built for Michael Ringer above the Kanmon Strait in Shimonoseki; a plain white modernist design, now a museum of the tenor Fujiwara Yoshie.
The halls of Hofu Tenmangu in Yamaguchi, built in 1958, join a main hall and worship hall by an offering hall in a delicate and elegant modern shrine design.
The main building of the old Meirin school in Hagi, a timber school of 1935 on the site of the domain school, is now open free as part of the Hagi Meirin Gakusha.
Lodgings for male staff built about 1931 on a Hofu estate, with an inward-facing entry, two small tatami rooms, and three hooded windows on its outer east wall.
A small lodging for female staff built about 1931 on a Hofu estate, with two tatami rooms and a board-clad back wall that doubles as the boundary along the street.
A two-storey plastered storehouse of about 1931 anchoring the street front of a Hofu estate, with a plaster band under the eaves and copper-clad window doors.
A T-shaped house of about 1931 in Hofu, Yamaguchi, joining reception and living wings under a hipped-and-gabled roof, with openwork transoms and a Western office.
A half-bay-deep storage shed and privy built about 1931 on a Hofu estate. Its board-clad back doubles as the north boundary wall, making it part of the street front.
A roofed gate and 48-metre wall of local pink cinder brick, half a brick thick with a sawtooth top on the street side, fronting a 1931 estate in Hofu, Yamaguchi.
Isagoya Ryokan in Minobu, registered in 2016, is an early Showa three-storey inn at the start of Kuonji's approach, said to have been moved from Fujinomiya.
Concrete arch bridge of 1931 over a gorge in Katsunuma, Koshu, Yamanashi, built to carry grapes to the station; now a footbridge and part of the wine heritage story.
Concrete cylindrical water divider of 1927 in Koshu, Yamanashi, where siphoned river water wells up and is split into three equal shares for farms and homes.
The 1933 main house of a Kofu restaurant inn beside the Takeda residence site, with glazed garden doors, restored exposed-post walls and a peacock-plaster alcove.
A 24-square-metre guest room built in 1933 for a Kofu restaurant inn, with garden-facing windows, embossed kinkarakami paper and cupboards beside the alcove.