Taishō

A tiny Taisho miso room beside the Yusa farmhouse in Naruko Onsen, Miyagi: plastered walls, a pantile roof and one curved beam carrying the roof. Registered in 1998.

Taisho-era storehouse of the Yusaya Ryokan at Naruko Onsen, built of so-called timber-reinforced concrete, with a stone-patterned base and arched openings.

Built in 1914 with twenty tracks radiating from a turntable, this Kyoto roundhouse is Japan's oldest in concrete. Designated in 2004 and open to visitors.

The former Nishijin telephone exchange in Kamigyo, Kyoto, finished in 1921, is a concrete building with Venus torsos and dancer reliefs in an Expressionist vein.

Seifuso in Kyoto, built by the Sumitomo family for Saionji Kinmochi, keeps twelve sukiya buildings around its 1912 main house. Important Cultural Property, 2012.

An English Tudor villa the financier Kaga Shotaro designed himself, its half-timbered shell and Jacobean rooms now a museum showing Monet and Mingei crafts.

A 1926 timber villa on the Yura River levee at Fukuchiyama, built for businessman Kataoka Kyubei. Its top floor is finished in high-grade red pine. Registered 2000.

The largest of Amino Shrine's eight registered buildings, this worship hall was rebuilt in 1929 after the 1927 earthquake, with layered chidori and kara gables.

At the center of Amino Shrine on the Sea of Japan coast stands its 1922 main hall, a compact nagare-zukuri building finely carved by its designer Kishi Kumakichi.

The Arai Family Residence Main Building in Yodo, Fushimi, Kyoto, is a registered tangible cultural property completed in 1926. This wooden two-story home elegantly fuses a Spanish-tiled Western wing with a sukiya-style Japanese parlor, embodying the refined taste of pre-war suburban living.

A 1926 soy sauce dealer's machiya facing Matsubara-dori, Kyoto, 5.5 ken wide, with round-bar lattices, a stone dado and a copper eave. Registered in 2008.

A stone well of about 1926 at Muryoshian, Kyoto: a granite curb of four interlocked slabs and a copper-roofed shelter that omits one post to keep a path clear.

The 1926 retreat behind a Kyoto soy sauce shop, built of prized tsuga hemlock, with shoin-style rooms below and a sukiya room upstairs. Registered in 2008.

A tea room and garden waiting arbor of about 1926 at Muryoshian, Kyoto: a four-and-a-half-mat room behind a mizuya, and a polished-log arbor. Registered in 2008.

A 2-storey storehouse of about 1926 at Muryoshian, Kyoto, joined to the house by a covered passage, with iron doors and lime-plaster walls. Registered in 2008.

North of the East Gate of Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto, the late Taisho mikoshi storehouse is a fireproof earthen building 12.1 metres long with three black iron doors.

The 1926 Imamiya Shrine Tower Gate in Kyoto is a two-storey gate whose tiered brackets and carefully tapered proportions give a tall form a calm, settled outline.

Built in 1926 beside the Tower Gate of Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto, the West Corridor gives a modern building the sweeping eaves and gables of far older shrine design.

Built in 1926 beside the Tower Gate of Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto, the East Corridor gathers its finest work in the gables, with medieval-style struts and brackets.

Standing on Shijo-dori in Kyoto's celebrated Gion district, Enma (Former Murai Bank Gion Branch) is a 1924 reinforced-concrete bank building designed by Yoshitake Choichi, the in-house architect of tobacco magnate Murai Kichibei. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan, it preserves the American-trained classical-revival aesthetics of the Taisho era, including a finely detailed parapet balustrade, and is easily seen on any walk between Yasaka Shrine and Hanamikoji.