Taishō

Built around 1925 as the headquarters of Nikkosha, one of Kyoto's earliest automobile distributors, the Fuji Rabbit Building blends classical columns, tire-motif stained glass, and a sun-shaped roof tower a short walk from Kyoto Station.

On the same plot as Kyoto's famous Funaoka Onsen public bath stands the wooden two-story inn building that started it all. Built c. 1923 with a 1930 renovation, the Former Funaokarō preserves the small banquet rooms and second-floor hall of a Taishō-era ryokan, registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in July 2003.

A 29-square-meter wooden storefront tucked beside Funaoka Onsen in northern Kyoto, the former barbershop is an early example of kanban-kenchiku (signboard architecture) built around 1923. It was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 2003 alongside three other buildings of the same bathhouse complex.

A registered wooden house of 1921 in Hanazono, Kyoto, built for a businessman home from Russia. Traditional outside, with a modern middle corridor. Private home.

Matsumoto Sake Brewery Ginjo Brewhouse in Fushimi, Kyoto: a small Taisho-era timber brewhouse whose diagonally boarded gables carry a tortoiseshell-shaped vent.

Matsumoto Sake Brewery Sakagura Hall in Fushimi, Kyoto: a 1924 storehouse, once the junmai brewhouse, clad in black boards to match the Daikokugura along the river.

Matsumoto Sake Brewery Daikokugura in Fushimi, Kyoto: a 1923 storehouse of three 40-metre earthen-walled bays joined side by side, its board-clad wall on the river.

A Taisho-period hall at Muko Shrine in Kyoto, brought from Osaka around 1967. One bay at the front and two at the back, it uses square posts rather than round ones.

Kankyuan, the one-and-daime-mat tea room at Mushakoji Senke in Kyoto, rebuilt in 1926, with a narrow board set between guest and host mats. Registered 2004.

A 1913 timber hall at Gion Kobu Kaburenjo with a 132-tatami stage room facing a pond garden, now the Gion Kagai Art Museum with Kyomai dance upstairs. Visitor tips.

Standing at the eastern foot of Shijo-ohashi Bridge, directly across from the historic Minamiza kabuki theater, Restaurant Kikusui has been a pioneer of Western cuisine in Kyoto since 1916. Its striking 1926 reinforced-concrete building, designed in an Expressionist style with Art Deco and Spanish accents and crowned by an iconic parabolic elevator tower, was registered as a Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 1997 and remains a beloved Taisho-era landmark of Gion.

Waka-no-yu, founded in 1903 and rebuilt in 1923 in West Maizuru's Hiranoya arcade, is a Western-style public bathhouse registered in 2018 as a national Tangible Cultural Property. Soak in soft water drawn from the same source as Manai-no-shimizu (one of Japan's Heisei 100 Famous Waters), heated by firewood, while admiring hand-painted Mount Fuji murals by one of the country's last sento muralists.

Built in 1920 as the record store of the Misumi court, this 45-square-metre brick building above Misumi West Port joined Japan's cultural property register in 2007.

This single-storey timber wing of 1920 held the waiting rooms of the Misumi court, linked to the courtroom block by a covered passage, and was registered in 2007.

The 1920 main building of the former Misumi Summary Court stands on a hill above the UNESCO-listed Misumi West Port. A rare surviving example of a regional courthouse built in pure Japanese style by the Ministry of Justice's works section, it is now open free to the public as the House of Law.

A 30-metre steel railway bridge of 1923 in Asagiri, built with one span and later given a second whose flanges were welded for heavier loads: two eras side by side.

A 1923 concrete arch in Hitoyoshi carrying a stream 43 metres through the railway embankment, its portal a five-centred arch to design No. 1007, and dry-stone walls.

The shortest registered bridge on the line, a 3.4-metre span of 1924 in Nishiki on an 8-foot I-beam to design No. 875, rolled by the Lanarkshire Steel Company.

A 4.8-metre steel bridge of 1923 near Hitoyoshi Onsen Station, rails set between two girders on longitudinal timbers, a detail of the earliest standard designs.

A two-span steel bridge of 1924 in Asagiri, 5.4 metres long, its 6-foot I-beams made by Japan's government steelworks, a foil to the British steel at Uchikado.