Edo

Discover the National Treasure "Autumn Pasture with Cattle" (Akino Bokugyu-zu), a masterpiece of Southern Song Chinese painting attributed to court artist Yan Ciping. Housed at the Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum in Roppongi, Tokyo, this exquisite silk scroll once belonged to the Ashikaga Shogun's famed Higashiyama Collection.

This National Treasure colophon by Yuan literatus Feng Zizhen praises a lost insect scroll by Song painter Yi Yuanji. Sen no Rikyu's letter saved it from being cut.

Soto-Sakuradamon holds the largest masugata court left at Edo Castle and the ground where Ii Naosuke fell in 1860. Free to pass, and lit nightly until 9 p.m.

Tayasumon in Kitanomaru Park is the oldest surviving building at Edo Castle, dated to 1636 by an inscription on its door fittings. Free to walk through at any hour.

The Main Hall of Gokokuji Temple in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward is the central building of a prayer temple commissioned in 1697 by the fifth Tokugawa shogun Tsunayoshi at the request of his mother Keishoin. With its seven-bay-square plan, sweeping irimoya roof, and refined fusion of Japanese wayo and Chinese-influenced karayo styles, this Genroku-era masterpiece is the only original main hall of a major head temple to have survived in central Tokyo from the Edo period. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1931, it offers visitors a rare encounter with the architectural ambition of late seventeenth-century Edo.

The Kobayashi Family Residence, a thatched farmhouse at 750 meters on a ridge in Hinohara, west Tokyo, was built in the early 1700s and is reached by monorail.

Nitenmon Gate at Sensoji Temple in Taito, Tokyo, is one of the few surviving examples of early Edo-period wooden architecture in central Tokyo. Built around 1649 and designated as a National Important Cultural Property, this striking vermilion gate originally served as the entrance to a Toshogu Shrine within the Sensoji precinct. Transformed through the Meiji-era separation of Shinto and Buddhism, it now houses guardian statues of Jikokuten and Zochoten. Fully restored in 2010, the gate offers visitors a rare glimpse into 17th-century Japanese craftsmanship.

Built in 1632 as the outer gate of the second shogun's mausoleum at Zojoji, this gate is the only part still standing on its own ground after the 1945 air raid.

A late Edo farmhouse in Ome, Tokyo, an Important Cultural Property since 1978. Moved from the Nariki hills, it keeps a cedar-bark and thatch roof. Free entry.

Raised in 1717 for the seventh shogun Tokugawa Ietsugu, this vermilion gate is all that survives of the last Tokugawa mausoleum, the rest lost in wartime raids.

Discover the Arai Family Residence Inner Storehouse (Uchigura) in Chofu, Tokyo — a nationally registered tangible cultural property dating from the late Edo period. Explore this rare surviving example of traditional Musashino farmstead architecture surrounded by historic estate woodland.

Mitake Shrine Suigyodo in Ota Ward, Tokyo, is a rare 1867 ablution hall used by Kiso Ontake mountain ascetics. Discover dragon carvings, a sacred well, and a quiet pocket of Edo-period faith just two minutes from Ontakesan Station.

For two months in 1868 the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, confined himself in this modest shoin at Kan'eiji, the room where Tokugawa rule quietly ended.

Discover Gallery ef Kura, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Asakusa, Tokyo. Built in 1868 as a timber merchant's storehouse, this remarkable dozo survived the Great Kanto Earthquake and WWII air raids, later reborn as an art gallery and cultural exchange space.

In Ome, Tokyo, the storehouse of Sōshidō dates to 1847, the oldest on the grounds. Its ridge tag names it the wind-gate storehouse, set at the southeast corner.

In Ome, Tokyo, the nagayamon gate of Sōshidō is a late-Edo farmhouse entrance. Its wings sheltered wartime evacuees; later Yoshikawa Eiji used them to store books.

Kyoshoji Temple Main Hall in Ikenohata, Tokyo, is an 1857 Jodo Shinshu hall built in fireproof dozo plaster construction, registered as a Cultural Property in 2010.

The Shimoda Residence in Nishitokyo housed Tanashi's hereditary headmen. A late-Edo, copper-roofed timber farmhouse, it is the city's oldest, registered in 2019.

Janoyu Onsen Takaraso, a Registered Cultural Property in Hinohara, is Tokyo's only secluded hot-spring inn: a thatched late-Edo farmhouse with a kabuto-shaped roof.

Discover Joshoin Hondo Naijin in Tokyo's Shiba Park—a 1769 Edo-period inner sanctuary, registered as a National Tangible Cultural Property, that miraculously survived the Great Kanto Earthquake and Tokyo air raids. Once the family temple of the famed Ichikawa Danjuro kabuki dynasty.