Taishō

A single-story 1915 house on Kohama Island with a hipped roof of Ryukyu red tiles sealed in lime plaster, a four-room plan and 20-mat front rooms used for meetings.

A 1915 screen wall standing inside the front gate of the Omori homestead on Kohama Island: 6 meters of dry-laid cut coral limestone topped with a roof-shaped ridge.

A 1924 Okinawan farmhouse moved into the Okinawa Zoo & Museum: hipped tile roof, deep amahaji veranda and three front rooms in classic order. Visiting tips inside.

A 1924 stone hinpun screen wall at Furusatoen, Okinawa Zoo & Museum: four courses of large awaishi blocks, 1.7 m high yet only 20 cm thick. Its role and visiting.

A 1924 stone pigsty-and-toilet of the Hirata family at Furusatoen, Okinawa Zoo & Museum: arched limestone pens, a manure pit and a toilet laid out in one enclosure.

Built in 1912 on Kuroshima, the Kamiyama Residence main house is a low, red-tiled timber farmhouse with an eight-mat principal room, a Tangible Cultural Property.

On a coral atoll 360 km east of Okinawa, this coursed-limestone office once ran the Tōyō Sugar Company's phosphate mine. Registered in 2005, it is now a museum.

In the port area of Kitadaitō Island stand the remains of a communal bath used by phosphate miners and residents. Two concrete tubs survive. Registered in 2007.

On riverless Kitadaitō Island, a sloping mortar floor of 500 square metres caught rainwater into two sunken tanks to supply the Shimosaka bath. Registered in 2007.

A round stone cistern supplying the Tōyō Sugar employee bath on Kitadaitō Island, about 2.5 m deep and 8.9 m across inside, with limestone walls. Registered in 2007.

A reinforced-concrete staff bath in the old company village of Kitadaitō Island, roofed with a segmental-arch slab and split into three rooms. Registered in 2007.

Around 1919, Toyo Sugar walled this phosphate store on Kitadaito: a 40 m rubble limestone wall pierced by four concrete rail tunnels. Registered 2006; open any time.

An 18 m concrete pier of about 1919 at Kitadaito's West Port, where twin rail grooves carried phosphate rock to barges. Registered in 2006; view it from the shore.

Sunjaga Well in Itoman, Okinawa's first registered cultural property: a Taisho-era limestone village well with a roofed basin, incense burners and New Year rites.

A red-tiled 1925 house in Ishigaki, Okinawa, built by a postal worker from salt-cured island timber, with a ridge-beam charm and two front rooms joined as one space.

Standing on a coral-limestone bluff overlooking the West Port of Minami-Daito Island, this roofless stone shell built around 1924 once housed the steam engine that powered the winches used to haul boats ashore during typhoons. Constructed in irregular dry-stacked masonry from the island's own coral limestone, it overlooks the very cove where the 1900 pioneer expedition first set foot on this remote Pacific island. Registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2000, it is one of the most evocative surviving relics of Minami-Daito's unique frontier history.

The 1923 living wing of a doctor's clinic-and-home, moved in 1980 to what is now Ishigaki Yaima Village. Open, post-free rooms, a carved entrance, a daily folk show.

Located in Sumita Town, Iwate Prefecture, the Kuriki Iron Works Ruins preserve the remains of a private ironworks that operated from 1881 to 1920. Designated a National Historic Site in 2021, it is the only surviving example in Japan of a complete small-to-medium scale blast furnace ironworks compound from the Meiji and Taisho periods, holding exceptional industrial archaeological value. Two blast furnace bases, office ruins, water channels, and casting factory remains lie quietly in the Tane-ga-hara highlands beloved by author Miyazawa Kenji.

Main hall of 1914 at a horse-headed Kannon shrine in Shizukuishi, Iwate, with a balustraded veranda, two-stepped brackets and deep carving around the porch.

A late Taisho gate 2.1 m wide opening onto Hidaka-koji in Mizusawa, with a hipped roof, eaves sealed in white lime plaster and a wicket door beside its board doors.