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.
Yamashita Kamesaburo built the Tozanso Annex in Atami in 1940 to receive guests. Staggered tatami rooms face Sagami Bay, with a low alcove and a tiled veranda.
Built in 1933 for banker Ishii Kengo, the Tozanso Main Building in Atami is a two-story villa with slender sukiya timberwork and a glass wall facing Sagami Bay.
At 17 square meters, the Tozanso Storage Shed in Atami is the smallest of the villa's seven registered buildings, with a half-sunken store and a matted room above.
Registered in August 2024, five months after the house behind it, this concrete gate and 34-metre glazed-tile wall are the part of the property the street sees.
Completed in 1935 at Hokoji Temple in Hamamatsu, this hall honours the founder behind folding doors and cusped windows, its brackets set in a continuous Zen row.
Rebuilt in 1953 on the approach path at Hokoji Temple in Hamamatsu, this two-storey gate carries bracketing that changes between its lower and upper levels.
Built in 1933 below a bluff at Hokoji Temple in Hamamatsu, this meditation hall sets matted platforms along both walls of a single room with a tiled floor.
A one-room Western-style building of about 1935 at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City, just 18 square metres, with red pantiles, washed mortar render and plaster reliefs.
A single-storey timber building of 1933 at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City, the first raised in the rebuilding campaign, with carved transoms and a large hipped roof.
The largest of the seven registered buildings at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City, with three banquet rooms below and a hall of 108 mats above framed in rosewood.
The innkeeper's own house of about 1935 at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City, three levels into the slope, mixing Japanese and Western rooms, with fine lattice fittings.
A two-storey timber wing joining Min'untei to the banquet hall at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City. Its record names Aoki Seihei, the carpenter who ran the work.
A two-storey timber guest wing of 1933 to 1935 at the Ochiairo inn in Izu City, its plan bent so rooms face the stream, with cypress posts and rare alcove timbers.
A two-storey timber building at the far end of the Ochiairo inn grounds in Izu City, worked in the sukiya manner, with pierced transoms drawn from The Tale of Genji.
A 1939 timber villa in Atami, Shizuoka, registered in 2019, with Japanese rooms on both floors facing Sagami Bay, finished in slender, elegant sukiya style.
Akatsukiya, a two-storey timber townhouse of 1933 on a corner in Kanazawa, has projecting lattices on both floors and is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property.
The Awazu Enbujo Theater in Komatsu, built about 1933 for a national innkeepers' convention, is a playhouse-style theatre that was restored and reopened in 2014.
On Kanazawa's Kodatsuno plateau, a 1928 home for biochemist Suto Kenzo: a half-timbered front, Japanese sides under one red-tiled roof, a central-corridor plan.
A 57-metre wall in Kanazawa that grows a hedge between twin concrete runs, built in 1928 for a German-trained doctor and now a registered cultural property.
Built in 1931 and modeled on a Kyoto National Treasure, this cypress Noh stage was moved into Japan's first public Noh theater, beside Kenrokuen in Kanazawa.