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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Hagi Castle

 

Hagi Castle was built in 1604 as the new base for the Mori Clan.

A few years earlier they had been ruling over most of the Chugoku region, but were on the losing side at the Battle of Sekigahra and so were stripped of most of their territory and confined to the western tip of Honshu.

They did not actually fight at Sekigahara, and it seems that Ieyasu betrayed them by breaking an agreement. Contrary to the prevalent notion that samurai were paragons of loyalty, betrayal was very, very common.

Removed from their main base at Hiroshima Castle, they asked to build their new base in either Hofu or Yamaguchi on the Inland Sea, but Ieyasu made them choose the remote area where Hagi now stands.

It was constructed mostly on the sandbar that connected Mount Shizuki with the delta of the Abu River.

Protected on 3 side by the sea, there were some fortifications around the base and on top of the mountain, but the main structures were built to the south.

A series of moats protected this side and the samurai residences formed the outer defences with other moats.

The main keep was 5 storeys and the base is clearly seen in these photos.

Like many of the castles built in the early Edo Period, Hagi Castle never came under any kind of attack.

Like many castles it was dismantled at the beginning of the Meiji Period.

There are a few gardens and teahouses inside the ruins,... click here to see some more photos...

While not soo much remains of Hagi Castle other than the stonework and moats, the opposite can be said for the castle town that grew up around the castle.

Because the railway ran around the town rather than through it, the old samurai and merchant quarters remain among the best-preserved castle towns in all of Japan.

The castle is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site connected to Japan's early Industrialization.

I was in Hagi a few months ago, and even though it has a lot to see for the visitor, it was not at all busy and the polar opposite of "overtourism", due mostly, I suspect, to its remoteness and limited transportation options.

I will be posting more on Hagi, and I have already posted quite a bit.... clicking here will get you to those posts... they come up in reverse chronological order, so you will have to scroll down to find older posts....

The previous post in this series on day 29 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the mouth of the Hashimoto River, one side of the castles water frontage...

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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.

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Mouth of the Hashimoto River

 

A few miles before reaching the Sea of Japan, the Abu River in Yamaguchi splits into two channels, the eastern being named the Matsumoto River, and the western being the Hashimoto River.

The island of land between them is where the castle town of Hagi was built at the start of the 17th century.

I walked along the west bank of the Hashimoto River from Daisho-in temple to Kannon-in temple.

At the mouth of the river is the fishing village of Tamae.

I am not sure what type of seaweed is out drying,....but my guess would be a species of kelp,... maybe kombu?

From Tamae over the river to Hagi jokamachi is Tokiwa Bridge. Actually two parallel bridges, one for pedestrians, one for vehicles. Mount Shizuka, with the castle ruins at its base, is clearly visible.

Looking back to Kannon-in and its pagoda-like Kannon Hall.

On the other side, the samurai district.....

Looking upstream ro where I had walked from.....

The next pilgrimage temple is 100 kilometers away in Hamada and my route will be along the scenic coastline of the Sea of Japan.

This is a channel that cuts across the corner of the island from the Hashimoto River to the sea. Not sure how much of it is man-made as it seems to be part of an outer moat system...

The final photo is a Kite. click here for another post with kites in flight..

The previous post was on Tamae Kannon-in Temple.

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.