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.
Built in 1933 as a railway tunnel was bored through the ridge beneath it, this Yokohama house hides a corridor-based modern plan behind a wholly Japanese exterior.
Built in 1933 as a Tokyo clinic's Fujisawa branch, this registered property moves air with a raised floor, double bay windows and three monitor roofs on the ridge.
Built in 1931, Shogenji Kuri is the priests' quarters of a Rinzai temple in Hakone. Registered in 2002, it keeps a central-corridor plan and a formal writing alcove.
The Ekodo is a small memorial hall on a rise northwest of Yugyo-ji's Main Hall. Under its pyramidal copper roof sits a raised, finely latticed ceiling. Early Showa work.
Yugyo-ji's bell tower stands on a raised stone base, an open bay of 1934 with inward-leaning octagonal posts. Its bell bears a 1356 inscription, a prefectural property.
Yugyo-ji's Hundred-ken Corridor links the Main Hall to the reception quarters, rising and turning with the sloping precinct, its walls lined with pointed-arch windows.
Shojoko-ji's 1937 Main Hall, seat of the Ji-shu sect in Fujisawa, spans roughly 30 metres each way, its central sanctuary wrapped in outer bays under high ceilings.
Showa Denko Kawasaki Factory Head Office: a 1931 two-storey concrete office on reclaimed land in Kawasaki, built for an ammonia works and still in use today.
The gate of Minato Junior High School in Yokohama reuses the Art Deco stone pillars and lamps of Hanazono Bridge, built in 1928 after the Great Kanto Earthquake.
Shinzanso, the former Fujiyama Raita villa of about 1935, stands in the Hakone Museum of Art garden in Gora, joining thatched wings and a green-tiled Western wing.
A sixteen-meter garden wall at the former Yamamoto Jotaro villa in Kamakura stacks earth and tile in nine courses on a cobble base, built with the tea room around 1956.
The machiai at the former Yamamoto Jotaro villa in Kamakura is a tiny tea-ceremony waiting arbor of cedar logs and bark-faced walls, built around 1956 and now registered.
The gate at the former Yamamoto Jotaro villa in Kamakura is a single-bay bracket of polished logs with a copper roof, a middle gate on the approach and now registered.
A 1932 timber house near Zushi Beach, Kanagawa, its central corridor serving Western and tatami rooms, its facade a line of window hoods. Registered 2022.
A boiler house built about 1946 by GHQ by the 1932 main house of the Sudo Family Residence in Zushi, Kanagawa, once with a boiler and coal store. Registered 2022.
The Sunshodo storehouse of 1936 in Kamakura, joined to the corner of the carving shop, has heavy plastered windows and no stair, each floor entered from the shop.
The Sunshodo main house of 1936 in Kamakura, a shop for Kamakura-bori carving, mixes a temple-like front and a finial-topped tower with castle-like plastered walls.
The Sojiji Goreiden, built in 1937, enshrines Emperor Go-Daigo in a shrine-like row of worship hall, offering hall and inner sanctuary. Registered in 2005.
Built in 1942, the Sojiji Sanpoden is a guardian shrine hall whose open, boat-hull-ceilinged front and porch lead toward the sanctuary. Registered in 2005.
Built in 1937, the Sojiji Daisodo is a working Zen monks' hall with tatami meditation platforms, two central columns and bell-shaped windows. Registered 2005.