Meiji

An 1888 barn on a headman's estate in Koshigaya, Saitama, split between an earth-floored miso room open to the rafters and a boarded tool room with a ceiling.

A brick warehouse built in Meiji-era Honjo to hold silk cocoons pledged as bank collateral. Iron-shuttered windows, a king post truss roof, free entry since 2017.

Moved from Ogose in 1957, the Main House of the Former Wada Residence in Tokorozawa kept an unusually wide earth floor for spreading tea leaf. Registered 2013.

Raised in 1902 as a silkworm shed and rebuilt for tea in 1951, this Tokorozawa workshop still shows the line shafting, propeller vent and slatted racks.

Dating to about 1887 and moved by hikiya around 1902, this Tokorozawa storehouse keeps a deep sheltered noki-ba where picked tea leaf was spread to dry.

The kagura hall of Koshigaya Hisaizu Shrine in Saitama, of the early Meiji period and moved in 1974, is a one-bay stage with a dressing room beside the approach.

The Gyoda main store of Jumangoku Fukusaya, a storehouse-style shop of 1883 on an old highway in Gyoda, Saitama, is plastered all over under large ridge plaques.

A barn of about 1870 on the Takazawa estate in Gyoda, Saitama, known as the shinoya, with a work floor of earth below and a silkworm loft vented by high windows.

A single-story wing added around 1897 on the Takazawa estate in Gyoda, Saitama, for the master: three eight-mat rooms with alcoves under a half-hipped roof.

Flat single-span stone arch of 1889 on the old Isesaki road in Honjo, Saitama, with pentagonal voussoirs; the oldest stone arch bridge still in use in Saitama.

The storehouse of the Tokorozawa Local Art Museum in Saitama, built in the early Meiji era, has white plaster walls with black-framed openings beside the gate.

Village kabuki stage of 1899 at Yasaka Shrine in Tochiya, Chichibu, Saitama, with a fully opening front and a movable raised platform; a rare regional shrine stage.

A brick-and-timber building of about 1900 on a Kawaguchi estate in Saitama, where a foundry owner ran the prefecture's first electric lighting. Flemish bond.

A household strongroom of 1905 on a Kawaguchi foundry estate in Saitama, limewashed above and rendered like masonry below, in line with two reception wings.

A tool store of about 1911 on a Kawaguchi foundry estate in Saitama. An English-bond shell plastered to look traditional, and the smallest of the seven.

A reception wing of about 1905 on a Kawaguchi foundry estate in Saitama: two antechambers, a ten-mat formal room and a veranda, older than the Western wing.

The main hall of Hachijo Hachiman Shrine in Yashio, Saitama, built in 1891, is a carved hall whose side panels show the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution.

Held at The Railway Museum in Saitama, the Tetsudō Komonjo (Railway Archives) is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property comprising 91 volumes of administrative records spanning 1870 to 1893. These foundational documents reveal how Japan built its first railways — surveys, land deals, British equipment, regulations, even uniforms. Survivors of the 1923 earthquake and WWII evacuation, they offer a rare window into Meiji modernization.