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.
In central Kanazawa, Ishiguro Shoten's store and house is a 1936 art dealer's machiya, red-ochre timber set against black plaster walls, registered in 2015.
Completed in 1957 on the lower Ozo River in Ishikawa, this 41.0-metre concrete dam was the first sabo dam in Japan designed by three-dimensional stress analysis.
Built by Shimizu-gumi in 1929 for the Takaoka Bank, this curved four-storey concrete landmark by the Asano River now houses the Kanazawa Bungeikan literary centre.
An early Showa board wall at the Former Tango Family Residence, Nakanoto, Ishikawa: 2.4 m high and 21 m long, plastered with openings above and panelled below.
A 1933 azumadachi house in Nakanoto, Ishikawa, with lean-to roofs on all sides and two sliding doors behind its main door. Registered in 2017 as a model of its type.
An early Showa storehouse at the Former Tango Family Residence in Nakanoto, Ishikawa: two stores under one roof, white mortar above and board or cast stone below.
An early Showa garden wall and gate at the Former Tango Family Residence, Nakanoto, Ishikawa: 29 m of board wall that turns a corner and lifts its roof into a gate.
Built in 1937, these 51 metres of fence in Nonoichi pair a street run of vertical boards, lattice and copper coping with an inner run faced in rustic cedar bark.
Built in 1937 on the northern street, this Nonoichi gate pairs a curved copper roof with a lattice transom and capped rafter ends, a Shōwa foil to the Meiji gate.
Built in 1937 by the Tamura family, this Nonoichi house stacks irimoya roofs over a plan that splits three guest rooms from family rooms along a central corridor.
The Kuretake Bunko Tea House in Hakusan, Ishikawa, is a c.1943 three-mat tea room called Kuretake-an, with an earthen veranda and a bamboo post set into the wall.
The Gotokuan Warehouse, a two-story clapboard building of 1949 in Daishoji, Kaga City, joins the main house by a lean-to and faces the street. Registered in 2005.
The 1933 kiln shed of the Tokuda Kutani workshop in Komatsu, Ishikawa, registered in 2019, a rare surviving shed with two overglaze kilns.
The 1933 main house of the Tokuda Kutani workshop in Komatsu, Ishikawa, registered in 2019, whose upper floor served as the overglaze painting studio.
Built as a Kanazawa restaurant in 1937, this house was moved intact after the war and made a home, keeping its swan transoms and two shoin alcoves. Registered 2004.
Shokoji's main gate in Hakusan, a gabled four-legged gate of 1956, shows dense bracketing and a dragon carved across the opening, a work of high decorative quality.
Shokoji's Sofu-an in Hakusan, a thatched tea room built in 1935, is named after Chiyo-ni's brush name and marked by a cross-shaped roof; a registered cultural property.
Shokoji's Chiyo-ni Hall in Hakusan, built in 1935 for the poet's 150th memorial, is a tiny thatched shrine holding Yoshida Saburo's carved image of Kaga no Chiyo.
Built in 1932 in the Jinnosuke Valley on Mount Hakusan, this 40.0-metre dam is the longest and the lowest of eleven stepped dams, and the footing for all of them.
Built in 1933 in the Jinnosuke Valley on Mount Hakusan, this 25.0-metre dam keeps its masonry centre between shoulders rebuilt in concrete. It was listed in 2012.