Korakukan

Korakukan was built in 1910 as a welfare facility for the Kosaka mine, which was then one of the richest in Japan, and it is the oldest wooden playhouse in the country still in use. The exterior is Western — white boards and sash windows, the architecture of Meiji progress — and the interior is entirely Edo: a wooden auditorium with sunken box seating, a revolving stage, a trap lift, and two hanamichi walkways through the audience, which is rare.

It was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2002 and it still works. A resident company performs almost daily from April to November, kabuki actors come for special runs, and you can tour the machinery below the stage — the revolve and the traps are still turned by hand. In a town of five thousand people in the far north of Akita, this is a genuinely startling building.