Important Cultural Property of Shiga

Two Momoyama halls at Hiyoshi Taisha in Otsu. The sanctuary repeats a neighbouring design with its metalwork stripped back; the worship hall has no walls at all.

A 1586 tower gate at Hiyoshi Taisha in Otsu, listed in 1917. Four carved monkeys prop the eaves, and three more play in pine branches on the upper storey.

A Momoyama gate at Hiyoshi Taisha in Otsu, dated only to a twenty-year span. Step through and the sanctuary is not ahead of you but turned aside from the path.

Three stone beam bridges over the Omiya River at Hiyoshi Taisha in Otsu, listed together in 1917. Each translates the joinery of a timber bridge into cut stone.

An Edo-period branch shrine of Hiyoshi Taisha in Otsu, built 1634. Worship hall, chamber and sanctuary link into an H-shaped plan under black lacquer and colour.

The Main Hall of Fudoji Temple stands near the summit of Mount Taijin in the Konan Alps of Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture. Built in the early Muromachi period using dramatic cliff construction (kake-zukuri), this Important Cultural Property clings to a massive granite boulder, with its principal image enshrined within the natural rock cavity behind the hall.

The Former Miyaji Family Residence, relocated to the Omi Fudoki no Oka historical park in Omihachiman, Shiga Prefecture, is a mid-Edo period farmhouse originally built in 1754 in Kunitomo — one of Japan's most famous gun-manufacturing villages. Designated as a national Important Cultural Property in 1968, this thatched-roof dwelling preserves rare archaic features of the Kohoku regional building tradition, including earthen-floor living spaces. Located next to the Azuchi Castle Archaeological Museum, it can be visited alongside Azuchi Castle ruins and other Sengoku-era heritage sites.

Myōōin, a Tendai retreat founded in 859 north of Ōtsu, had four halls and its terraced precinct designated Important Cultural Properties in 1993. Free entry.

Read over the body of Eigen-ji's founder the day after his death in 1367, this ink funeral elegy is an Important Cultural Property at the Shiga Zen temple he built.

An ink manuscript written at Eigen-ji in 1377, recording the Dharma address spoken as the Zen master Jakushitsu Genko was enshrined in the founder's hall.

Three scrolls at Eigen-ji, Shiga, recording the sermon and incense verse for the 33rd memorial of founder Jakushitsu Genko, held on his death anniversary in 1399.

A 1367 ink scroll preserves the verse chanted over incense at founder Jakushitsu Genkō's seventh-day rite, when his disciples resolved to keep Eigenji alive.

Two ink-on-paper scrolls hold a Zen sermon spoken at Eigenji in 1379 for the founder's thirteenth-anniversary memorial. An Important Cultural Property since 1936.

The Gyorekisho records the monk Enchin's 853 to 858 journey through Tang China. The Ishiyama-dera scroll is a Kamakura-period copy, an Important Cultural Property.

Held at Ishiyama-dera near Lake Biwa, this two-scroll ink-on-paper land register from the 1190s lists fields, areas, and dues from the medieval estate system.

Eigenji's founder Jakushitsu Genko died in 1367 after writing this order: return the land, scatter, leave nothing behind. His monks refused, and the temple stands.

An ink letter by Jakushitsu Genkō, the Zen monk who founded Eigen-ji in 1361. An Important Cultural Property since 1936, kept among the temple's treasures in Shiga.

Three ink-on-paper scrolls show how Jōrakuji in Konan, Shiga rebuilt after the 1360 lightning fire that razed it. These medieval appeals funded the temple's National Treasure main hall and pagoda.

At Onjō-ji survive 592 volumes of a Buddhist canon the shogun Ashikaga Takauji had copied in 1354, praying for Emperor Go-Daigo and the war dead of both sides.

A Heian document at Enryaku-ji, Mount Hiei, tied to the 805 transmission of the bodhisattva precepts from the master Daosui to Saichō, founder of Tendai.