Shōwa

Completed in 1929 and registered in 2005 for its design quality, this scratch-tiled Neo-Gothic hall in central Niigata is a free museum you can walk straight into.

Oil magnate Niitsu Tsunekichi built this 1938 Niigata guest house for foreign visitors who never came. In 1998 it became the prefecture's first registered building.

This 1967 hall on Mount Ninoji in Shibata City steps its worship and offering halls up through one tatami room. Registered in 2024; it is also the trailhead.

The Ninomiya Family Residence New Inner Room in Seiro, Niigata, is a 1935 two-storey reception wing with a ten-mat zashiki and Western room, open to the lagoon.

The Ninomiya Family Residence Farm Building in Tawarayanagi, Niigata City, is a 1948 two-storey outbuilding on tall posts framing the homestead with its 1918 house.

Standing on the central avenue of Tsubame City in Niigata Prefecture, the Tsubame Church of the United Church of Christ in Japan is a two-story wooden Western-style church built in 1930. With a kindergarten on the first floor and a chapel above, it long supported the working families of this metalworking town. Locally attributed to architect W. M. Vories, it is one of very few surviving prewar Christian buildings in Niigata, and was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2021. Its white weatherboard façade, semicircular arched windows, and small gable cross still shape the streetscape of Tsubame today.

Bannai River No. 13 Sabo Dam in Myoko, Niigata, built around 1934 after a 1933 flood, is the tallest of the registered check dams at 5.9 m. Registered in 2003.

Bannai River No. 14 Sabo Dam in Myoko, Niigata, built around 1934, is the uppermost registered check dam, symmetrical with four arched drains. Registered 2003.

Built in 1949 at the heart of the Hosaka estate in Tonome, Joetsu: a single-storey gabled house with a guest porch and a plain reception room with no nageshi beam.

A mid-Showa glasshouse for fruit and gardening on the Hosaka estate in Joetsu: posts on a waist-high block base, rafters pitched at 45 degrees and a timber anteroom.

An 8-square-metre tea garden pavilion on the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, set on the path between two tea houses, its small hipped roof of tile ringed with copper.

A narrow early Showa store in the Dairoan compound of the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, built tall on long posts to hold food, with two doors on its east side.

A postwar sukiya tea house by Tanaka Taiami on raised ground at the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, built to face Sado Island, rustic outside with fine beams inside.

An L-shaped tea house of 1950 by Tanaka Taiami at the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, joining a thatched hut and a tiled study, seen from across the garden.

A two-storey 1927 house with a rooftop lookout, built for a branch of the Ito family at Somi, Niigata, its walls and fittings based on tall rectangles.

A compact early Showa storehouse on the south wall of the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, heavily built with thick timbers, tile-clad base and doors facing the house.

A Western wing of about 1928 joined to a Meiji villa in central Niigata, where Aizu Yaichi lived for a decade. It now displays his calligraphy and works by Ryokan.

An early Showa storehouse for household goods in the Dairoan compound of the Ito estate in Somi, Niigata, with a raised roof and deep eaves carried on beam ends.

Built in 1934 on Murakami's Omachi Street, this 2-storey townhouse shop with a 5.5-ken frontage was registered for its tall early Showa form. It still sells sake.

The smallest structure at the Mori doctors' estate in Mano, Sado: a 3 square metre early Showa family privy of corrugated iron with a carefully built front eave.