Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings and Their Town Types

The Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, shortened to Judenken, protect an entire townscape rather than a single building. The system was created by the 1975 amendment of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties and covers historic settlements and streetscapes such as castle towns, post towns and temple-approach towns.

The procedure has two steps. A municipality first decides on a Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and the national government then selects those it judges highly valuable, on the municipality's application, as Important Preservation Districts. As of 4 September 2026 there are 130 districts in 107 municipalities, covering about 4,072.0 hectares in total.

Fifty years have passed since the system began in 1975, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs has set up a page titled 50 Years of the Denken System. Protecting townscapes has thus been a national system for half a century.

Each municipality sets out a preservation and utilization plan under its preservation ordinance and carries out planned conservation district by district. There is national subsidy for repairing buildings and for work that tidies the scenery. About 30,770 buildings and environmental features that make up these townscapes have been identified and protected.

The unit being protected differs from a system like National Treasures, which designates buildings one by one. Many of these towns are places where people still live, so visitors are walking through residents' daily surroundings.

The Agency's list attaches a type to each district, a classification showing what the town was built on. Among the 130 districts, merchant towns are the most numerous, with 24 under a single label. They are followed by samurai towns (13), port towns (12), mountain villages (11), rural market towns (9), post towns (8), castle towns (4) and teahouse towns (3). Combined labels such as merchant and teahouse town or samurai and merchant town also exist.

Examples: merchant towns include Kawagoe (selected 1999) and Kurashiki Kawahan (1979); post towns, Tsumago-juku (1976) and Narai-juku (1978); samurai towns, Kakunodate and the Horiuchi District of Hagi (both 1976); and teahouse towns, Higashiyama Higashi (2001) and Kazuemachi (2008) in Kanazawa and Gion Shinbashi in Kyoto (1976). Izushi (2007) is a castle town, Hamasaki in Hagi a port town and Shirakawa-go Ogimachi a mountain village. Some types are named after an industry, such as the porcelain-making town of Arita Uchiyama and the salt-making town of Takehara.

Area varies greatly between districts. Kazuemachi is about 0.6 hectares, Higashiyama Higashi about 1.8 and Narai-juku about 17.6, whereas Tsumago-juku is about 1,245.4. Even among post towns of the same type, the area you can walk and see differs completely.

Hagi has four districts of different types: Horiuchi and Heiankoji are samurai towns, Hamasaki is a port town and Sasanamiichi is a post town. Within one city you can compare a samurai quarter, a harbor town and a roadside post town. Kanazawa also has four, with Higashiyama Higashi and Kazuemachi as teahouse towns and Utatsuyama-fumoto and Teramachidai as temple towns. Using type as a guide, you can read the differing roles of towns within a single city.

Kyoto has four districts: Kamigamo is a shrine-priest town, Sannenzaka and Saga-Toriimoto are temple-approach towns, and Gion Shinbashi is a teahouse town. In Takayama, Sanmachi and Shimoninomachi-Ōjinmachi are both merchant towns. Where towns of the same type stand together, you can compare how the districts differ.

Among the 130 districts in the Agency's list, the year with the most selections is 2012, with 9 districts. On 4 September 1976, seven districts were selected at once: Tsumago-juku, Kakunodate, the Horiuchi and Heiankoji districts of Hagi, Shirakawa-go Ogimachi, and Gion Shinbashi and Sannenzaka in Kyoto. The latest selection is Mihonoseki in Matsue, dated 4 September 2026.

The range of types is wide as well. Ineura in Ine, Kyoto, is a fishing village of about 310.2 hectares, and Omori Ginzan in Oda, Shimane, is a mining town of about 162.7 hectares. Shiojiri in Nagano has both the post town of Narai-juku and the lacquerware town of Kiso-Hirasawa, and Takayama has two merchant-town districts.