Edo

The main house of the Yamamoto merchant firm in Kainan, Wakayama: a late-Edo living wing crowned in 1906 by a three-storey reception block with a railed veranda.

A tall four-legged gate of the mid-Edo period stands before the Important Cultural Property main hall of Risho-Gokoku-ji, the temple locals call the Great Temple.

Cut from local rhyolite in the late Edo period, these steps and wall hold Ryogon-ji to its mountainside and frame the main hall. A Registered Cultural Property.

Built in 1857, this Rinzai Zen main hall stands plain on a stone terrace above Ono hamlet, without canopy or brackets, its strength lying in sturdy joinery.

An Important Cultural Property at Sainanin on Mt. Kōya, showing the guardian deity Daigensui Myōō. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a Yuan Chinese work.

An Important Cultural Property at Kongobuji, from Yuan-dynasty China. Tradition calls it Yakushi, the Medicine Buddha, but its official title names only a buddha.

Ten sliding-door panels by Ike no Taiga (1723–1776), a founding master of Japanese literati painting, preserved at Henjōkōin temple on sacred Mount Kōya in Wakayama. Designated a National Treasure of Japan in 1952, the set includes the celebrated Sansei gakai-zu — Elegant Gathering at the Mountain Pavilion — and stands as one of only three Taiga works ever to receive Japan's highest cultural designation, surviving in the prestigious sub-temple for which it was originally painted.