Shōwa

Discover the Former Hane Gakuen Kumano Higher Commercial School Building, a newly registered tangible cultural property in Shingu City, Wakayama. This 1937 Western-style school features a unique abacus-decorated entrance, representing Japan's pre-war commercial education heritage.

The Ueda family's main house, built around 1929 on the Kinokawa's south bank in Hashimoto, Wakayama, pairs a traditional hipped roof with a quietly modernised plan.

Completed in 1971 as the centerpiece of Kii Fudoki no Oka archaeological park in Wakayama City, the Matsushita Memorial Museum was funded by Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita and designed by architect Shizutaro Urabe. This modernist concrete building features walls clad in local Kishu blue stone and window grilles inspired by ancient dotaku bronze bells, earning its designation as a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2022. Set among approximately 500 ancient burial mounds of the Iwase Senzuka Kofun Cluster, a designated Special Historic Site, the museum offers visitors a unique journey through Wakayama's millennia of history.

Built in 1953 in Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, this wooden schoolhouse features advanced fire-prevention design including reinforced concrete walls and a hillside evacuation route, earning its status as a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property. Now reborn as Akizuno Garten through community initiative, it offers a farmers' restaurant, hands-on workshops, accommodation, and serves as a gateway to the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trails.

Discover the former Kii-Yuasa Station building, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property built in 1927 along the Kisei West Line. Now a dining venue in Yuasa, Wakayama — the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce.

Koyasan University Library, located on the sacred Mount Koya in Wakayama Prefecture, is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan designed by the celebrated architect Takeda Goichi and completed in 1929. As the first Western-style building on Koyasan, this reinforced concrete structure features a stunning double-height reading room and a five-story book stack, housing approximately 300,000 volumes of Buddhist texts including three nationally designated Important Cultural Properties.

At 867 metres, this 1928 timber station is Koyasan's rail gateway: early-Showa round windows under a pyramidal roof topped by a sacred jewel, restored in 2015.

Built around 1929 by a Kishu lacquerware dealer, this two-story house in black lime plaster stands in Kainan's Funao district near the Kuroe lacquer town. Registered 2019.

A 26-meter concrete wall and set-back gate in washed-out mortar enclose the garden of the 1929 Hatada residence in Kainan, a modern corner-lot estate. Registered 2019.

In Iwade, Wakayama, the Fukuda Residence inner wall is black-plastered on the approach side and white on the garden side, an early Shōwa Registered Cultural Property.

A single-bay yakuimon in Iwade, Wakayama, the Fukuda Family Residence Gate was rebuilt in 1950 from timber salvaged when the older gate burned. Now registered.

The Matabei Residence Storehouse, built around 1930 north of the main house, stands on a granite foundation with a plank-and-plaster west face. Registered in 2014.

Mitsugon-in Karukayado is a vermilion Buddhist hall on UNESCO-listed Mount Koya, near the Okunoin approach. Belonging to Mitsugon-in founded by Kakuban, it preserves the moving Karukaya Doshin and Ishidomaru legend and the revered Parent-and-Child Jizō.

A single-storey retirement house of 1937 north of the compound: four rooms off a dogleg corridor under a hipped-and-gabled roof, with vivid red-earth gable walls.

Built in 1936 in Yuasa, a soy-sauce town, this steel-framed auditorium pairs a triple-arched porch with rhythmic ribbed side walls near the old quarter.

Built around 1933 by a Mio man who prospered in Canada's salmon fishery, this Japanese house with a clapboard Western parlor now serves as a town-run guesthouse.

A concrete gate and fence with washed-aggregate finish, pilasters and stepped coping front the Yushin-an house, a 1930s street face and Registered Cultural Property.

The Wakayama architects' association built this compact 1966 modernist office for itself, with tiled facades, a floating upper wall, and hidden rainwater pipes.

Completed in 1938 and modeled on the National Diet Building, Wakayama's prefectural hall survived the wartime bombing and still serves as the seat of government.

A 36-meter steel five-span girder bridge built in 1933 to carry the line across Oike pond, using seven-meter I-beams unusual for the period. Registered in 2014.