Meiji

The Onda Family Residence Storehouse, Yashio, Saitama, was built in 1897 by a dyeing family. A boat hangs under the eaves, used to rinse cloth and to escape floods.

A middle Meiji storehouse by the Shingashi River in Fujimino, Saitama, all that remains of the Yoshinoya shipping agency. Registered in 1998; exterior only.

The Kagomodo at Menuma Shoden is a two-story 1879 hall for okomori, secluded prayer at the temple, and the largest of the eight registered structures here.

Menuma Shoden's 1894 Niomon is a five-bay, three-passage gate holding the Nio guardian kings; its carved central beam previews the National Treasure hall.

The Mizuya at Menuma Shoden is a one-bay purification pavilion inside the Niomon, only 3.4 square meters yet richly carved with bracketed eaves and thick beams.

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 early Meiji sacred dance stage at Hisaizu Shrine in Koshigaya, Saitama. Fan rafters in bunched clusters shade its front eaves, and kagura is danced here still.

The Jumangoku Fukusaya Gyoda Main Store in Gyoda City, Saitama Prefecture, is a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property — a two-story earthen storehouse originally built in 1883 as a kimono merchant's shop. Featuring plastered walls and ornamental ridge tiles, it contributes to Gyoda's historic streetscape and is part of the Japan Heritage "Tabi-Gura Town" story. Today it serves as the flagship shop for the beloved Jumangoku Manju confections.

Discover Terasaka Bridge in Honjo City, Saitama — a Registered Tangible Cultural Property and JSCE Heritage of Civil Engineering built in 1889. This rare Meiji-era stone arch bridge is the oldest of its kind in Saitama Prefecture.

The Tochiya Yasaka Shrine Stage, located in Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan built in 1899. This rare surviving rural kabuki stage features a movable two-level stage mechanism and represents the rich tradition of community theater that once flourished across rural Japan. Located near the first temple of the famous Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage, it offers visitors an authentic glimpse into the folk performing arts culture of the Chichibu mountains.

On the western bank of the Nakagawa River in Yashio, Saitama, the main hall of Hachijō Hachiman Shrine — rebuilt in 1891 and registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property in 2022 — is a single-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuary covered head-to-toe in elaborate woodcarving. Most remarkably, its side panels depict the 1889 promulgation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, the Imperial Diet, and the Privy Council, an extraordinarily rare example of contemporary statecraft carved into a Shinto shrine.

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.