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 early Showa garden gate of the Mori doctors' estate in Mano, Sado: a plain timber gate 2.1 metres wide dividing the garden from the family's living quarters.
The 1932 clinic wing of the Mori doctors in Mano, Sado: a hipped-roof timber building with clapboard walls, bracketed eaves, railed gables and a green exterior.
The early Showa stone front gate of the Mori doctors' estate in Mano, Sado: 3.8 metres wide, with tooled posts, polished edges, rounded tops and no doors.
The corridor of the Ryokan Memorial Hall in Izumozaki, Niigata, by Yoshiro Taniguchi, is a 23-metre cantilevered walkway leading visitors to the gallery.
The administration building of the Ryokan Memorial Hall in Izumozaki, Niigata, by Yoshiro Taniguchi, greets visitors with deep eaves and a vertical lattice.
The exhibition building of the Ryokan Memorial Hall in Izumozaki, Niigata, by Yoshiro Taniguchi, is a low concrete hall with a veranda for Ryokan's calligraphy.
The Rengebuji Temple Omon Gate on Sado is a pair of cut-stone pillars about 3.7 metres high, built in 1928 at the north end of the approach as a landmark entrance.
The Kanagawa Prefectural Office in Yokohama, completed in 1928 from a competition design, is the "King" of the city's three towers, open to visitors on weekdays.
A 27-square-metre timber storehouse behind a Hadano shop, its mortar walls scored to read as coursed stone. Registered in 2017 as a Tangible Cultural Property.
Frontage of 1.2 metres, depth of 1.8 metres, and a national registration number. This mortar-sealed box behind a Hadano shop is among Japan's smallest listings.
Twin in size to the storehouse beside it, this Hadano warehouse carries a king post truss overhead, a Western technique the national record singles out.
The Roman Bath of the Iwamotoro inn on Enoshima, built in about 1930, is a Western-style bath under a glass dome, with tiled walls and peacock stained glass.
Designed in 1936 by Kasai Manji, co-architect of Tokyo Station, this Kamakura house joins Japanese rooms and a garden veranda to a Western porch. Registered in 2020.
The Former Kachi Residence in Hayama, completed in 1928 to designs by Endō Arata, a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, is a Prairie-style house of Ōya stone, now a rental.
This 1929 half-timbered house in Kamakura was built for Marquis Kacho Hironobu. Its French formal garden opens free all year; the interior opens twice a year.
The former Shonan Waterworks booster pump station in Kamakura, a concrete building of 1936 by the Daibutsu Tunnel, has scratch-tiled walls and a geometric stair.
A two-storey house of about 1940 beside Onshi Matsuso in Hayama, built by Kaneko Kentaro in his eighty-eighth year. Farmhouse below, tea-house above. Registered 2021.
Former Kamakura Library, Kanagawa: a 1936 timber library built by donation after the 1923 quake, with a large gabled roof, gegyo ornaments and green scratch tiles.
The Kamakura villa of film importer Kawakita Nagamasa, built about 1942 with an arched corner porch. Registered in 2021, it is private and closed to visitors.
A small tiled gate with a gently swelling roof stands above stone steps, while seventy metres of tuff laid in Yokohama's Bluff bond wraps this hillside plot.