Taishō
Tokyo · 大正Browse Tokyo’s cultural heritage from the Taishō period (1912 – 1926). Filter by type and keyword, with concise stories, maps, and travel tips.
Jogu-ji's reception annex in Hiroo, Tokyo, dates to around 1914. Registered in 2017, its plain rooms and comb-shaped transom show restrained Taisho temple design.
Built in 1916 as a pawnshop vault, this Yanaka storehouse rises three storeys of clay-plaster construction on a span of just 3.6 metres. Registered in 2000.
Built as the home of Yasui Tetsu, the university's first dean. At 111 sq m it is much the smallest of the seven registered buildings on this campus today.
Home to the university's foreign teaching staff, four units above and shared rooms below. Horizontal eaves and carved capitals show Raymond under Wright.
Completed in 1924 among the earliest buildings on this campus: an E-shaped plan, a hall projecting behind the entrance, and a Wrightian central section.
Built for the science classrooms and the largest of the seven at 1,453 sq m. Its south half came first, and triple steel sash windows face Building No. 7.
Completed in 1925 at Hongo and registered in 1998, the Reppinkan is the earliest building in what is called Uchida Gothic. Planned as a museum, it never became one.
Completed in 1925 at Hongo and registered in 1996, Yasuda Auditorium was funded by an anonymous gift from Yasuda Zenjiro and designed by Uchida Yoshikazu.
A Taisho-period wooden soba restaurant standing amid the office towers of Toranomon, Tokyo. Designated as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, this beautiful building with ornamental chidori-hafu gables has served handmade soba since 1872. Enjoy one of Edo's three great soba traditions in a structure that survived the Great Kanto Earthquake, wartime air raids, and was carefully relocated to preserve its heritage.
Discover the Nakae Shop Building, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Taito, Tokyo. Built in 1924 by shrine carpenters after the Great Kanto Earthquake, this wooden structure houses Japan's last surviving sakura nabe (horse meat hotpot) restaurant from the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter era.
The Maeda Family outdoor privy on Niijima, Tokyo, is a mid-Taisho stone building registered in 2004. Walls and barrel vault are built wholly of island koga-ishi.
An Important Cultural Property film recording Onoe Matsunosuke—Japan's first movie star—performing the iconic "Farewell at Sakurai" before the future Emperor Shōwa at Japan's first motion picture exhibition in 1921. Only the second film ever designated nationally; a digitally restored version is freely available online, with related exhibits at the National Film Archive of Japan in Kyobashi, Tokyo.
Discover Metempsychosis (Seisei Ruten), Yokoyama Taikan's monumental 40-meter ink scroll painting depicting the eternal cycle of water. Designated as an Important Cultural Property, this masterwork is housed at MOMAT in Tokyo's Kitanomaru Park.
Built in 1914 at the Railway Agency's Shinbashi Works, the wooden Nade 6141 is the oldest surviving bogie electric railcar in Japan and the prototype of today's commuter trains, introducing the three-door layout and multiple-unit control system. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2017, it is preserved and displayed at The Railway Museum in Saitama City.