Tonomachi Street Tsuwano Samurai Quarter

 

Koi swimming in small canals along the street are an icon of Tsuwano, a small castle town in the mountains of Shimane.

In the previous post we looked at Tonomachi Street, the main street of the town that is part of an Historic Preservation District.

That post looked at the merchant section of the street, but in this post we will look at the samurai section of the street, closer to the castle.

Fewer of the buildings remain in this section, but plenty of walls and gates remain.

One of the remaining building is the Yorokan, the domaoin school for samurai. Running alonside it is the main canal filled with koi.

It was founded in 1786 by the 8th Lord, and closed in 1872.

Mori Ogai, the famous author born in Tsuwano, studied here.

It used to hold a huge collection of artifacts relating to local history and folklore, as seen above, but has been renovated back to its original condition, as seen below.

While some space was for book learning and lectures, most of the spaces were used for various weapons training.

There are a lot of large storehouses in the immediate vicinity.

One of the first group of buildings inside the samurai quarter, opposite the Catholic church, has been converted into a restaurant, coffe shop and tearooms, and souvenir shop called Saronoki, well worth visiting for its garden.

The previous post in this series on Tsuwano was on the other section of the old street, the merchant quarter.

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Tonomachi Street Tsuwano Merchant Quarter

 

Tsuwano, a former castle town in the remote mountains near the Shimane and Yamaguchi border is known as a "Little Kyoto".

Little Kyoto is actually a registered name you can use if you pay the organization the right fees, and I find it quite misleading. What it really means is there are historic attractions in a relatively small area, not that they are pretentious, overcrowded, and overpriced like the real Kyoto.

Tsuwano is also one of the more than 120 areas of Japan that is a Historic Preservation District. Actually the Japanese term is a long-winded title involving "traditional buildings," but I prefer the simplicity of Preservation District.

Tsuwano is also classified as a Japan Heritage site, a fairly recent system that includes sites and practices that they can't get onto UNESCO World Heritage status. Actually, that is a little cynical of me.... a lot of the Japan Heritage sites are quite interesting...

The preservation district in Tsuwano centres on Tonomachi Street, the main street of the old town, and it was in earlier days divided into the samurai section, closer to the castle, and the merchant section. At that time a huge gate separated the two sections. That gate is now relocated to be the gate of Yomeiji Temple.

Worth exploring are the narrow side streets...

In fact a few traditional ryokan are hidden away down side streets...

The main street does have some modern buildings on it, but also a range of traditional businesses...

There are a couple of sake breweries....... incidentally, the final photo of the post is from inside one Sake brewery.

There is a traditional rice shop, well worth visiting for the small ponds crammed full of koi in the rear...second photo of the post

There are some eateries and coffee shops....

My favorite though is a traditional pharmacy filled with weird and wonderful example of Chinese medicine....

The Japan Heritage information centre is also well worth a visit.....

In the next post I will look at the samurai quarter....

I have done quite a few posts on Tsuwano, click here to see some in reverse chronological order....

I have also posted on quite a few Preservation Districts, recent ones being Yanai in Yamaguchi and Yuasa in Wakayama.

The previous post was on the gardens at the Hori Mansion, a little out of town...

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Murodani Rice Terraces

 

On the southern slopes of Mount Taima can be found the Murodani Rice Terraces.

In 1999 they became classified as one of the top 100 rice terraces in Japan.

There is currently about 1,000 of them here, but in earlier days, there were four times as many.

There are signs and a short path to a designated viewing point. I guess that reduces the amount of trespassing to get good photos.

The best times to view would be around Mat and June, when the paddies have been flooded and seedlings planted....

I recently posted on some other "top" rice terraces, the Nakayama Rice Terraces on Shodoshima Island.

The interesting thing, for me at least, is that these rice terraces, like those up in Okuizumo, were a by-product of the traditional iron industry.

Japan has almost no iron-ore, so domestic iron and steel was produced using iron sand, something the Chugoku Mountains have a lot of. The terraces were made after the valley had been " mined" for the iron sand. I did read a complicated, translated explanation on how the soil and rocks of the ground were separated from the sand, and that this process somewhat started the process of the terraces being formed, but I didn't really understand it.

A couple of years ago, while visited Hagi and its World Heritage sites connected to Japans industrialization in the Meiji period, I can across a tatara, the kind of forge used in creating iron from iron sand, that the Mori Clan had set up to create iron for its building of a western-style ship.

It seems that here in Murodani is where the iron sand came from. It was shipped down to the coast on horses, transferred to Kitamaebune ships and taken down the coast to Abu, near Hagi, then packed up into the mountain site of the tatara by horses again. If you have any interest in the history of tatara I have plenty of posts on Okuizumo about the topic.

If you want to learn more about the Kitamaebune ships, click here.

The previous post in this series was on the views from the top of Mount Taima.

if you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the most recent posts.