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.
A 1955 timber branch school in Sakura, Chiba, registered in 2021. Just two classrooms sit along one corridor, built to prewar conventions after the war ended.
A reinforced-concrete shelter under a grass mound in Narita, ordered by the Imperial Household Ministry and finished on 8 December 1941, the day war began.
The Nishihiro cannery in Choshi began as a bonito workshop, rebuilt in 1935 with timber trusses over a columnless hall and a tatami office above. Registered in 2018.
Oya stone at the base, three courses of local Choshi stone above, then English-bond brick corbelling out to a capped crown. Thirty-four metres, registered in 2018.
A 1931 single-storey wing of formal rooms behind a Sakura merchant's shop: altar and back rooms with verandas on a south garden, and a marble-lined guest lavatory.
This concrete building in Kashiwa, Chiba, built for an army regiment in about 1938, trained searchlight crews under a canvas sky; only two such buildings survive.
A straight 141-meter concrete tunnel of around 1928 near Yorokeikoku on the Kominato Railway, its block-built west portal battered back and grooved for drainage.
Kominato Railway's longest tunnel, 421 meters of S-curving concrete built around 1928, its arch laid in concrete blocks and its horseshoe portals cast in place.
Kominato Railway's Kazusa Murakami Station, built around 1927: a tiled half-hip block and a tin lean-to shelter joined by one long canopy, still in daily use.
A four-span bridge of around 1928 carrying the Kominato Railway high over the Yoro gorge on tall round piers, its red girders made by Yokogawa Bridge Works in 1927.
Kominato Railway's Yorokeikoku Station, built around 1928, fronts the road with a steep gable and porch; at 96 square meters it is the line's largest station.
The 1939 home of psychiatrist Shikiba Ryuzaburo in Ichikawa, Chiba, registered in 2021, designed by Yanagi Soetsu and Hamada Shoji in a mingei blend of East and West.
The gate of the Shibuya Family Residence in Kamagaya, Chiba, an early Showa yakuimon with side walls, faces the main house across fields that frame the homestead.
An early Shōwa well in Kanaya, Futtsu: a head cut from a single block of Bōshū stone over coursed stone and a shaft in bedrock, 8.2 metres deep. Registered.
A household Inari shrine of 1953 in Kanaya, Futtsu, only 0.59 metres high, its posts, beams, rafters and doors all carved from stone. Registered; access unannounced.
A 1953 house in Kanaya, Futtsu, with a layered tiled roof, foundations of local Bōshū stone and a plaster acanthus ceiling. Registered; interior access unannounced.
Built in 1927 as a Tokyo broker's guest annexe, Seiyokan Club in Ichikawa carries flared hakamagoshi gables on three sides. Registered in 1999, now a concert hall.
Rebuilt in 1930 after earthquake damage, Senchakuji's main hall in Kisarazu casts brackets and eaves in concrete while holding the form of a timber Buddha hall.
The Tobe Goemon Family Residence Rice Storehouse in Noda, Chiba, is a 1949 street-side store whose front half held rice and miso and rear half raised silkworms.
The Tobe Goemon Family Residence Warehouse in Noda, Chiba, is a 1949 wharf store on the Edo River embankment, with an open lean-to and a boatmen's room upstairs.