Taishō
大正Browse Japan’s cultural heritage from the Taishō period (1912 – 1926). Filter by prefecture, type, and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
A four-span steel bridge of 1923 over the Kobashira River in Nishiki, 42 metres long, its 30-foot deck girders set on round piers of finely laid concrete block.
A 7.3-metre steel railway bridge of 1923 in Hitoyoshi: a 20-foot plate girder to standard design No. 540, with crimped stiffeners, on abutments of concrete block.
A two-span concrete bridge of 1923 in Nishiki, 4.3 metres long, apparently derived from a box-culvert design, with a cutwater on its pier and stone wing walls.
A six-span steel bridge of 1923 in Nishiki, 62 metres long, with 30-foot deck plate girders on oval concrete-block piers, 150 metres from its round-piered twin.
A 4.7-metre steel bridge of 1924 near Yunomae on a 12-foot I-beam made by the Carnegie company, almost perfectly symmetrical and 500 metres short of the terminus.
A 14-metre steel bridge of 1924 in Taragi on one 40-foot girder, its two main girders staggered to cross an irrigation channel at an angle, with a fan wing wall.
A concrete railway arch of 1924 in Taragi, 3.7 metres long and 8.1 metres wide: a skewed five-centred arch to design No. 1007 with a concrete invert and stone walls.
A concrete skew bridge of 1923 in Taragi, 4.6 metres long with an 8-foot span to design No. 1305, whose stone wing walls curve to follow the irrigation channel.
A six-span steel bridge of 1923 over the Menda River, at 75 metres the line's longest registered bridge, combining 30-foot and 40-foot girders of design No. 540.
The 1924 timber terminus of the Kumagawa Railway at Yunomae, with a carriage porch, a block-signal room and an old ticket window: the line's only pre-war station.
Completed in 1924 beside the springs of Hakenomiya in Kumamoto, this square brick pump station carries Expressionist detailing and keeps its original pump.
Built in 1924 to replace a wooden school lost to fire, this three-storey concrete building by ministry engineer Nagaoka Yue carries Secession-style capitals.
This 1921 storehouse in Yatsushiro shows exposed brick at street level and timber-framed brick above, rendered in mortar to imitate a traditional plastered kura.
Discover the Brick Wall of the Yatsushiro Convent of the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres in Kumamoto Prefecture. Built in 1919 by a French Catholic order, this 21-metre Registered Tangible Cultural Property is a rare survivor in central Yatsushiro and a quiet window onto Meiji- and Taisho-era Franco-Japanese exchange.
A late Taisho wall of black plaster over checkered brick at the Kashiwabara house in Ogawa, Uki City, repaired after the 2016 Kumamoto quakes and registered in 2021.
A tall two-storey retirement house of 1922 behind the Kashiwabara main house in Ogawa, Uki City, with alcoves, desk niches and osa-ranma transoms of Taisho craft.
A Taisho-era yakuimon gate and 12-metre plastered wall on a washed artificial-stone base, marking the guests' way into the Kashiwabara merchant house in Ogawa.
The Nagasaki Jiro Bookstore of 1924 in the old merchant quarter of Kumamoto, a brick-clad building with arches upstairs, is one of the city's oldest bookshops.
The Hayano Building in Kumamoto, a concrete office block of 1924 said to be the first built for rent in the city, shows early office design in its windows.
On the Tsuboi River by the stone Meiju Bridge stands the 1919 Dai-Ichi Bank Kumamoto Branch, the city's first concrete building, designed by Yoshitoki Nishimura.