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.
The stepped channel of the Ushibuse River in Matsumoto, Nagano, built in 1917 after Alpine torrent works, drops through nineteen stone sills along 141 metres.
A 1923 Art Deco powerhouse, the 247.8-metre Momosuke suspension bridge and the twin-arch Kakizore aqueduct in Nagiso, Nagano. Walk the bridge; view the rest outside.
A 1914 sake brewery building in Azumino, Nagano, where the yeast starter was prepared, with a koji room at its north end and a Western-style truss roof.
The office of the Ueda silkworm egg cooperative in Nagano, built around 1917 with a pedimented front, recalls the silk city that shipped 220,000 boxes of eggs.
In Matsumoto's Hofukuji post town the Ozawa family kept the honjin inn. Their gable-fronted main house, rebuilt in 1913, rises around a skylit three-storey atrium.
The former Showa Kogyo silk mill, a reeling shed of about 1925 now at Rekishi no Sato in Matsumoto, keeps the high windows and roof vent of a modern silk mill.
The Former Jorgensen House in Karuizawa is a 1926 summer villa of an American missionary, a gabled timber cottage with a sunroom entrance and a stone fireplace.
A 1921 head office of an Okaya silk filature in Nagano. Timber-framed but clad in brick tile, it saw the 1927 Yamaichi strike and now houses a weaving workshop.
A late Taisho shoin in Matsushiro, Nagano City: six rooms in two files, a tea room with a round window, and a floor raised to frame the pond garden beyond.
A 1923 plaster-walled merchant house on Komoro's old Hokkoku road, now a free exhibition hall keeping its shop counter and trolley rails. A readable piece of the old post town, minutes on foot from the castle ruins at Kaikoen park.
At the Sakai brewery in Chikuma, Nagano, the Taisho-gura looks like a storehouse but was the lodging where the master brewer and his winter workers actually lived.
The Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House in Matsumoto is a long 1919 silk-raising building, registered in 2004, tall and with few openings.
The Shiohara Family Residence Main House in Matsumoto is an early Taisho farmhouse, registered in 2004, with a long ridge ventilator over upstairs silk rooms.
The Shiohara Family Residence Gate in Matsumoto is an early Taisho front gate, registered in 2004, with a ring-pattern ridge and board-and-plaster wing walls.
The Prince Shotoku Hall of Shorenji in Matsushiro, Nagano, rebuilt in 1912 after a great fire, is decorated inside and out with fine plaster reliefs of dragons.
The bell tower of Shorenji in Matsushiro, Nagano, built around 1912, is an open tower on a tall hexagonal stone base, visible from the street of the old town.
A 1912 timber gatekeeper's lodge with a half-octagonal front beside the main gate of Shinshu University's Ueda campus, moved twice and still a security office.
Zenkoji's Niomon Gate in Nagano, rebuilt in zelkova in 1918, houses Nio guardians by Takamura Koun and Yonehara Unkai, placed in reverse order. Registered in 2020.
An L-shaped Taisho-era rice granary at the Takeshige brewery in Motai, extending the front bin and marking a stage in the brewery's growth. Listed as hard to recreate.
A Taisho-era two-storey earthen-wall building on the west edge of the Takeshige brewery in Motai, once the cooperage where sake barrels were made, now used for storage.