Japan's UNESCO World Heritage Sites

The outer half of the peninsula and 3 km of sea around it are listed for a food chain that runs from the northern hemisphere's southernmost seasonal sea ice up the salmon rivers to brown bears. The easy way in is Shiretoko Goko: a free 800 m raised boardwalk, fenced with 7,000-volt wire, leads to the first of the five lakes, while the trails round them need a ¥450 lecture (a paid guided tour from May 10 to July 31) and close whenever a bear appears.

Shirakami holds the largest virgin beech (buna) forest left in East Asia, 16,971 hectares on the border of Aomori and Akita, and no path in its core is maintained: on the Aomori side you go in by the old paths or 27 designated routes, the routes only after notifying the forest office. Day-trippers head for the blue pond at Juniko and the Anmon falls, and both are outside the listed area.

High water closed the Anmon gorge trail three times in August 2026; since September 5 it is open only as far as the Third Fall, the nearest of the three, and walkers fill in a trail form at the entrance. The road in to Anmon closes for the winter when the snow comes: the 2025–26 closure ran from November 17 to April 24 (Shirakami Visitor Center).

In the 12th century the Oshu Fujiwara ruled northern Japan from a city here that rivalled Kyoto, until it fell in 1189. Five of its places are listed: the temples of Chuson-ji and Motsu-ji, the sites of two lost temples, and Mount Kinkeisan, the sacred hill the Pure Land gardens were aligned on. Go first to Chuson-ji's Konjikido, raised in 1124 and covered in gold leaf inside and out, where four generations of Fujiwara lords lie in gilded coffins inside the altar.

For more than 10,000 years the Jomon people of northern Japan lived in settled villages yet never took up farming, and 17 sites in Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate and Akita show how. Sannai-Maruyama, on the edge of Aomori city, was lived in from 3900 to 2200 BCE, and its pit houses and six-post structure have been rebuilt; the structure's post holes still held chestnut posts a metre across when archaeologists opened them.

At Sannai-Maruyama the north mound display is closed until November 30, 2026 (planned) while its building is replaced, parts of the site around the large pit building and the children's graves are closed for repair works, and on October 20, 2026 the site opens only at 13:30 (Sannai-Maruyama Site Center).

Toshogu, Futarasan Shrine and Rinno-ji temple share one wooded hillside and 103 listed buildings; Kegon Falls and Lake Chuzenji are not part of the listing. Start at Toshogu, rebuilt by Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1636 for his grandfather Ieyasu, with more than 500 carvings on the Yomeimon gate and the three wise monkeys on the sacred stable, the shrine's only unpainted building. Iemitsu's own mausoleum at Taiyuin is done in sober black and gold; by tradition he asked that it never outshine Toshogu.

The only regular way in is the Ogasawara-maru, and one round trip takes six days: 24 hours out from Tokyo's Takeshiba pier, three nights on Chichijima while the ship waits, 24 hours back. What is listed is the wild side, most of Chichijima and Hahajima outside their villages and the uninhabited islands beyond, where more than 90 percent of native land snails live nowhere else. To land on Minamijima, a drowned-karst islet off Chichijima where sea turtles nest, you need a licensed Tokyo nature guide.

Japan's government opened this model silk mill in 1872 with French machinery and a Frenchman, Paul Brunat, to lead it; it reeled silk until 1987, and its last owner, Katakura, kept almost every building. The 140 m reeling hall, the world's largest when its 300 French basins went in, still holds the machinery of the mill's last years. The other three listed sites (a silkworm farm, a sericulture school and a cold store for silkworm eggs) are 75 to 100 minutes away by public transport.

Le Corbusier's only building in Japan opened in 1959 because France, which at the end of the war took over the European art that the Kobe shipbuilder Matsukata Kojiro had left in Paris, would return most of it only if Japan built a museum for it. Inside, a ramp climbs to a square spiral of galleries on his Museum of Unlimited Growth plan (the other two built are in India); outside, the forecourt around Rodin's Gates of Hell was restored to its 1959 layout in 2022.

The permanent-collection galleries are due to close for facility work from January 12 to March 19, 2027 (National Museum of Western Art).

Of the three thatched villages listed along the Sho River, Ogimachi in Shirakawa-go (Gifu) is the big one, a village of 128 households with 59 gassho-zukuri farmhouses; Ainokura (20 houses) and Suganuma (9) are over the border in Gokayama (Toyama). Every ridge in Ogimachi runs north to south, so one face of each roof takes the morning sun and the other the afternoon, and when a roof needs new thatch, more than 100 people turn out to redo a whole side in one go.

Fuji's 25 listed parts take in the mountain itself with its pilgrim trails and summit shrines, eight Sengen shrines around the foot, the lodging houses of the oshi pilgrim guides, the springs of Oshino Hakkai, Shiraito Falls, all of the Fuji Five Lakes and the pine beach of Miho no Matsubara on Suruga Bay. Without a climb, spend the day in Fujiyoshida, where the Yoshida trail, the most used route up since the late 18th century, starts at the shrine of Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen-jinja.

The 2026 climbing season ran from July 1 (Yoshida and Subashiri trails) or July 10 (Fujinomiya and Gotemba) to September 10, and every trail to the summit is now closed for the winter. The next season is planned for early July to early September 2027, exact dates to be announced. In season climbers pay a ¥4,000 trail fee, register online and may not start up between 14:00 and 03:00 without a mountain-hut booking (Mt. Fuji Climbing official site).

Sado's gold and silver mines are listed for the Edo period (1603–1868), when they were still worked entirely by hand while mining elsewhere in the world was turning to machines. At Aikawa you walk down into the Sodayu tunnel, cut by hand early in that era and around 10°C inside, and stand beneath the Doyu no Warito, a V-shaped cleft dug down into the hill along a vein found in 1601; the other listed parts are the Tsurushi silver mine and the Nishimikawa placer workings.

The mine's tunnel course closes for maintenance on December 2 and 3, 2026 (Golden Sado, the site's operator).

Start in the Western Precinct, where Horyu-ji's Main Hall and five-storey pagoda are among the oldest wooden buildings standing anywhere; the pagoda's central pillar is a cypress felled in 594. The ¥2,000 ticket (cash only) also takes in the Great Treasure Gallery and the octagonal Hall of Dreams, and 25 minutes' walk to the northeast, Hokki-ji, the listing's other temple, has Japan's oldest surviving three-storey pagoda, finished in 706.

Nearly all the castle grounds are listed, 107 hectares out to the outer moat and 82 structures from the keeps down to gates and plastered walls, and in four centuries none of it has seen a battle or been damaged by war. You climb the main keep's six floors on steep, narrow wooden stairs, and the city lets in no more than 1,000 people an hour, so on busy days you may wait at its door.

From early July 2026 to about late July 2027, scaffolding on the Ni-no-yagura turret and the Mizu gates beside the main keep gets in the way of some views of the keep and of its night lighting, and parts of the route are narrower. The keep itself stays open (Himeji City).

Seventeen separate places make up this listing: thirteen temples, three shrines and Nijo Castle, spread over Kyoto, Uji and, for Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, Otsu. Kiyomizu-dera, the Golden and Silver Pavilions, Ryoan-ji's rock garden and Uji's Byodo-in (its Phoenix Hall is on the ¥10 coin) are all in it, while Fushimi Inari and Sanjusangen-do are not; Saiho-ji's moss garden has let visitors in only by advance application since 1977.

Enryaku-ji's main hall, the Konpon Chudo, is closed inside while its long renovation is completed. Until January 2028 its oil lamp, the Fumetsu no Hoto, and the stand-in for its hidden Buddha are shown in the Manpaido, up the slope from the hall, and until December 2026 a viewing deck lets you look down on the works (Enryaku-ji).

Todai-ji, Kofuku-ji and Kasuga-taisha stand in Nara Park, with the Kasugayama forest behind the shrine (no felling or hunting allowed since 841) and Gango-ji a short walk south in the old town; the other three parts are Yakushi-ji and Toshodai-ji in the west of the city and the open grounds of the Nara Palace Site. At Todai-ji, the Great Buddha Hall you walk into was rebuilt in 1709 seven bays wide instead of the original eleven, but at the original height of 48.7 m.

Kofuku-ji's five-storey pagoda has been hidden inside a 60 m scaffolding shelter since March 2025 for its first major repair since 1901, due to finish in March 2034; the temple's halls and National Treasure Museum stay open (Kofuku-ji).

The listing joins three holy mountain areas by their old pilgrim roads across Wakayama, Nara and Mie: Koyasan, where 51 of the 117 temples take overnight guests; Yoshino and the Omine range, the root training ground of Shugendo's ascetics; and the three grand shrines of Kumano, reached on the Kumano Kodo. If you can see only one part, make it Nachi, where Seiganto-ji's red pagoda stands against the 133 m drop of Nachi Falls, next door to Kumano Nachi Taisha.

Kimpusen-ji's National Treasure Niomon gate in Yoshino is under a dismantling repair due to finish in fiscal 2028. On the Kumano Kodo, a landslide has closed the Mandara-no-michi path from Nachi Station towards Kumano Nachi Taisha since June 2026, with no date set to reopen (walkers take prefectural road 43), and the Kohechi has been detoured round a collapse north of Obako Pass since May 2023. Road building also closes part of the Ohechi between Wabuka and Tako stations, with no detour, from June 8, 2026 to the end of April 2027 (Kimpusen-ji, Nachikatsuura Town, Wakayama Tourism Federation).

Two clusters of burial mounds, 49 in all, built for the ruling elite of the late 4th and 5th centuries, now stand among the houses of Sakai, Habikino and Fujiidera, south of central Osaka. The largest, Daisen Kofun, kept by the Imperial Household Agency as Emperor Nintoku's tomb, is 486 m long inside three moats and closed to all; from the 2.8 km path around it you see only a wooded hill, so for its shape go up to Sakai City Hall's 21st-floor lobby or take the tethered balloon over Daisen Park.

From 588 until the court moved to Nara in 710, Japan's capital stood in the fields of Asuka and then at Fujiwara, in today's Kashihara, and what is listed is the archaeology of both, 19 palace, temple and tomb sites. The loop bus stops at Asuka-dera, finished in 596 as Japan's first full-scale temple, and at Ishibutai, the bared stone chamber of a tomb that tradition gives to Soga no Umako, 30-odd boulders weighing 2,300 tonnes in all.

The Kitora tomb's wall paintings were lifted out from 2004 to save them and are shown only in set periods, to visitors who register ahead, at the Shijin-no-Yakata beside the tomb (Asuka Historical National Government Park).

The dome and walls are what is left of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel and finished in 1915. It stood 160 m from the hypocenter on August 6, 1945, and because the blast struck it almost vertically, the central section stayed standing while everyone inside was killed. Off-limits since 1962, the ruin is seen from outside its fence, at any hour, across the Motoyasu River from the Peace Memorial Park.

The shrine built out over the tidal flat, its great torii in the bay and the forest of Mount Misen behind are listed together, 431 hectares in all; the halls keep the layout Taira no Kiyomori gave them in 1168. Plan by the tide table rather than the clock: the shrine only looks afloat when the tide is above 250 cm, and you can walk out to the torii only when it drops below 100 cm.

The five-storey pagoda on the hill beside the shrine, one of the listed structures, is under restoration until November 2027, and the east corridor is being structurally reinforced until December 2026 but stays open to walk through (Itsukushima Shrine, planned dates).

Silver was dug here from the 16th century into the 20th, and the listing reaches well beyond the nearly 1,000 mine galleries in the wooded hills, to the old mining town of Omori and the roads down to three harbours that shipped the silver out, among them the hot-spring port of Yunotsu. From Omori, walk 2.3 km up the valley to Ryugenji Mabu, the only gallery open all year (¥500), where 157 m of tunnel still show the miners' chisel marks.

The World Heritage Center's exhibition rooms are due to close for renewal from October 2026 to March 2027, though the Okubo Mabu tours still start there. Slope damage has closed the Korozaka stretch of the old silver road to Yunotsu, between Goro Bridge and the Sakaneguchi guardhouse site, since February 20, 2025, with no date set to reopen (Oda City).

The listing covers the island's mountain core, where Miyanoura-dake (1,936 m) is Kyushu's highest peak and more than 8,000 mm of rain falls a year, plus one arm of forest running down to the west coast. The best-known tree is the Jomon Sugi, the largest of the island's ancient cedars, 16.1 m around the trunk and an 8–10 hour hike there and back; Shiratani Unsuikyo, the moss gorge that was a model for the forest in Princess Mononoke, lies just outside the boundary.

A landslide brought down by Typhoon No. 24 and heavy rain has closed the road to Shiratani Unsuikyo since September 4, 2026, and the gorge is shut until further notice. The Jomon Sugi trail and the Arakawa bus reopened on September 17, and guided hikes are advised while slopes stay loose (Yakushima Mountain Area Conservation and Use Council, September 25).

Twenty-three places from Kagoshima to Iwate trace how Japan learned iron and steel making, shipbuilding and coal mining from the West between the 1850s and 1910, and eight of them are in Nagasaki. Take a landing tour to Hashima, the walled coal-mining island called Gunkanjima (Battleship Island), home to more than 5,000 people in 1960 and empty since its mine closed in 1974; on the way out, the boats pass a Mitsubishi shipyard crane of 1909 that still loads ships.

Mitsubishi's shipyard museum in the 1898 Former Pattern Shop, one of the Nagasaki parts, has been closed for building work since April 2020. At Misumi West Port in Kumamoto, the July 28, 2026 earthquake brought down part of the roof of the old Misumi Kaiun warehouse (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; Nagasaki City; Kumamoto Prefecture, July 31).

Okinoshima, 60 km out in the Genkai Sea, is itself the object of worship, and no visitor may land: one Munakata Taisha priest at a time keeps its shrine, and even he strips and bathes in the sea before going ashore. The 80,000 offerings found there, from the 4th to the 9th century and all National Treasures, are kept in the Shimpokan museum at Hetsu-miya on the mainland, and from a worship hall on Oshima, 25 minutes by ferry, the island shows on the horizon on clear days.

Christians here kept their faith in secret for more than two centuries, passing as Buddhists until the ban was lifted in 1873, and ten of the twelve listed places are their villages on remote coasts and islands. Start at Oura Cathedral, Japan's oldest standing church, where on March 17, 1865, Hidden Christians from Urakami whispered to Father Petitjean that their hearts were the same as his and asked where the statue of Santa Maria was; the one he led them to still stands on the right-hand side altar.

The village churches ask visitors to give notice in advance through the Information Center and admit no sightseers during Mass or other services; Oura, Hara Castle and the Hirado sites need no notice. Egami Church on Naru Island is shut, grounds included, every Monday and third Sunday and on October 25, 2026 (Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region Information Center, as of September 28, 2026).

Shuri Castle's red halls are modern rebuilds; the listing protects the site itself, including the stone platforms of earlier main halls that show the hall was rebuilt at least seven times. Also in Naha are the royal tomb of Tamaudun, the Shikinaen garden villa and a stone gate beside the Shureimon. Farther out lie Sefa-utaki, the old kingdom's most sacred site, and the castle ruins of Nakagusuku, Katsuren, Zakimi and Nakijin, where the stone walls are the thing to see.

Shuri Castle's rebuilt main hall opens to visitors at noon on November 23, 2026, with 30-minute timed tickets sold online (spare same-day slots also go on sale at the Kofukumon window). The whole park is closed on November 22, and on the 23rd the free area inside the walls opens at 11:15 and the paid area at noon; paid-area entry for adults rises to ¥1,000 from that day. At Sefa-utaki, drainage works close part of the grove until November 1, and from November 2 to January 5, 2027, visitors can go only as far as the Ujoguchi entrance, with entry free (Shurijo Castle Park, Nanjo City).

No one lives in these 42,698 hectares of subtropical forest on four islands, listed for animals found nowhere else, among them the Amami rabbit, the flightless Okinawa rail of the Yanbaru forest and the Iriomote cat. On Iriomote, the largest part, five jungle areas have taken a fixed number of people a day since March 2025, and every visit needs Taketomi Town's approval in advance; Pinaisara Falls takes 200, only with a registered guide.