Shōwa
Saitama · 昭和Browse Saitama’s cultural heritage from the Shōwa period (1926 – 1989). Filter by type and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
Matsumoto Kyoshitsu Omoya is a wooden two-story machiya townhouse built in 1929 as a ryokan along the historic Chichibu Okan highway in Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture. Featuring traditional shinkabe-zukuri and dashigeta-zukuri construction, it is registered as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property. Now repurposed as a private tutoring school, it stands as a testament to the commercial prosperity of Chichibu's Meisen silk textile era.
A 1931 Kawagoe house with convex irimoya roofs, a coffered formal room, and a corridor splitting entrance from living space. Registered in 2014; exterior view only.
A 1.7-metre timber gate of about 1931 on Kawagoe's Hachiman-dori, with a gently convex copper gable roof and slatted wing walls. Registered 2014; street view only.
This two-metre gate of 1930 in Chichibu is a registered cultural property, with adzed naguri surfaces on its posts and a single tier of widely spaced rafters.
Designed in 1930 by Chichibu-born architect Yamada Jun, this registered house crosses gabled roofs at differing heights over a Western exterior and Japanese rooms.
Discover the Musashino Bank Gyoda Branch, a 1934 reinforced concrete bank building registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property. Featuring scratch tiles and cast stone decorations, this early Showa architectural gem stands in the heart of Gyoda — Japan Heritage tabi warehouse town in Saitama Prefecture.
Built around 1930 on a corner of Chichibu's Banba-dori, Yasudaya raises a mortar parapet with a cornice and acanthus panels. Registered 2004, still a butcher's shop.
The Warabi Kindergarten Circular Building in Warabi City, Saitama Prefecture, is a reinforced concrete kindergarten designed in 1963 by Sakamoto Kanao, a pioneer of circular architecture in Japan. Its innovative circular floor plan, which maximizes natural light on a compact urban site, earned it registration as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2024 — the first building in Warabi City to receive this honor. It remains an active kindergarten serving approximately 140 children.