Taishō

A light bracket-arm gate into the south garden of a Taisho villa in Tezukayama, Osaka, with bark-on log posts, an adze-rippled beam and panelled doors under iron.

Built in 1924 on the site of Japan's 1922 Housing Improvement Exposition in Minoh, this compact timber house shows the Japanized bungalow style of Amerika-ya.

An 88-square-meter Taisho guest wing in Tondabayashi, Osaka: a 15-mat room with alcove and carved transoms, and a 10-mat antechamber. Registered 2008; not open.

A 45-meter tile-roofed fence of the early Taisho period in Tondabayashi, Osaka, on a diagonal-laid stone wall with boards and plaster above. Registered in 2015.

A Taisho storehouse about 18 meters long in Tondabayashi, Osaka, with a plastered street wall and a tea room facing the garden at its west end. Registered 2015.

An early Taisho nagayamon gate in Tondabayashi, Osaka, with a plastered rice store on one side and a 6-mat sitting room on the other. Registered in 2015.

The Udatsuya townhouse in Nishinari, Osaka, built in 1913, has plastered udatsu fire walls at its front and a sukiya-style entrance with round windows.

A Taisho-era tea house in Kaizuka, Osaka, joined to the main house by a corridor: a 4.5-mat room with mizuya, waiting room and toilet in 23 square meters.

Umetani Dental Clinic in Nishinari, Osaka, a timber building of about 1922, wraps a traditional townhouse plan in a Western front of tile and weatherboard.

A Taisho-era outer wall, 9.2 metres long on a cut-stone base, linking buildings on the north edge of the Ebara compound in Toyonaka to guard it against floods.

Taisho-era gate and wall between the main house and annex of the Ebara compound in Toyonaka: a bracketed gate with a sliding plank door, the wall open at the top.

A Taisho-era roji gate and 13-metre wall splitting the front garden of the Ebara compound in Toyonaka, its outer face finished in black plaster and lattice windows.

Discover the Endo Family Residence in Osaka's Tezukayama district, a 1922 Western-style wooden two-story house designed by American architect William Merrell Vories. Originally built as a Presbyterian missionary house, this Registered Tangible Cultural Property features a central front porch, a staircase hall, and a fireplace-warmed living room from Japan's Taishō era.

Standing in the heart of Osaka's historic financial district, the Osaka Club is a stately 1924 building designed by architect Takeo Yasui. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 1997, it is celebrated as one of "Osaka's Three Great Modern Buildings" alongside the Cotton Industry Hall and the Osaka Gas Building. Its bold blend of Southern European massing with Asian, Indian, and Islamic decorative motifs makes it the defining masterpiece of Yasui's "Free Style" — a unique window into the elegant world of Taisho-era Japanese gentlemen's society.

The Kashita Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall in Izumisano, Osaka, is a 1915 tiled hip-and-gable hall with a gabled porch and coffered room, registered in 2024.

The Kashita Shrine Main Hall in Izumisano, Osaka, is a 1915 single-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuary rebuilt after a shrine merger, plain in design and registered in 2024.

The Katashimo Wine Food storehouse in Kashiwara, Osaka, a wine store of the late Taisho period, is an early mix of timber framing with concrete walls and floors.

A 1912 Osaka row house built after a tram line widened the road. Fireproof black plaster faces the street, a wall of glass faces the river. Registered in 2018.

Early Taisho two-storey timber Western-style house in Enokojima, Osaka, said to be a prefectural official residence, with weatherboard walls. Registered in 2006.

A 1926 bathhouse on the old Kyoshigoe highway in Izumisano, its granite tub still set under a plastered barrel vault. Registered in 2024, now a city office.