Takehara 竹原
For centuries, the enterprising merchants of Takehara have combined their commercial instincts and ambitions with a love of food and good eating to put their country town at the forefront of developments in Japan's food history.
Located in a wide, sheltered bay on the northern shore of the Seto Inland Sea roughly midway between the large port of Onomichi and the city of Hiroshima, Takehara was a leading maker of salt and sake during the Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji eras (1868-1912). The history and wealth of the town's merchants during this time is reflected in a unique collection of eclectic and imposing warehouse-residences, combining opulent homes and gardens with businesses. Starting over fifty years ago, Takehara's merchants began preserving their architectural treasures, and today they house an inviting array of restaurants, cafes, and food shops and provide the backdrop for a year-round calendar of art events, concerts, and seasonal festivals. The biggest event each year is the Shoukei no Michi candle festival during the last weekend in October when the historic district is illuminated by bamboo candles for two nights.
Takehara is an ancient town. Its long history as a market town for the area is due to its strategic location. But it was in the early 1600s that it rose to prominence when it became a large-scale manufacturer of salt. A national market for food had developed in Japan as a result of the unification of the country under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). This, in turn, led to the rise of a food industry that was further fueled by the country's rapidly growing population and the emergence of a new urban class dependent on prepared foods.
At the time, the Seto Inland Sea was the center of Japanese salt-making, but these were mostly small-scale moshio seaweed and labor-intensive agehama enden (raise to the beach) style salt makers. Takehara's merchants took the new, more efficient irihama enden (flood the beach) method of making salt developed in the nearby town of Ako and applied it to its own wide, shallow bay, which experiences the greatest difference between high and low tides in the Seto Inland Sea. Adding reclaimed land to the salt fields and digging a canal to the town center in 1650 to support the processing and trading of salt, Takehara soon became a salt-making center during the Edo period. The town's salt was shipped east to Osaka and Tokyo and west to the provinces located along the Sea of Japan up to Hokkaido.
In the late 19th century, Takehara added sake brewing to its food-making portfolio, becoming a leading maker of refined ginjo and daiginjo sakes. With the rise of the merchant class at the end of the Edo era, pleasure and entertainment replaced the old samurai culture, and sake became Japan’s new lifeblood. But it wasn't until 1888 when a method was invented to make a good-tasting sake using soft water (until then most sake was made with hard water) by Miura Senzaburo in the neighboring village of Akitsu that Takehara's merchants could take advantage of the town's pure and delicious well water to make sake. At one time, there were about twenty sake brewers in Takehara. Today only three remain, but each is a well-known brand: "Ryusei" by the Fujii Sake Brewery, "Seikyo" by the Nakao Sake Brewery, and the eponymous "Taketsuru."
When Japan developed an interest in foreign foods in the 20th century, the Taketsuru family sent their son Masataka to Scotland in 1922 to learn the art of making whiskey. Upon his return with his Scottish wife Rita, he launched the business that would become Nikka Whiskey, today one of Japan's leading whiskey makers. In 2015, the company was the winner of the World’s Best Blended Malt Whiskey award for its Nikka Whisky Taketsuru Pure Malt 17 Years—a rich and robust yet creamy tasting whiskey very much in the tradition of Seto Inland Sea flavors.
Architectural Treasures
Takehara's salt fields are now gone, having been replaced by shipbuilding yards in 1960, an initiative led by another son of a local sake brewing family, Hatoya Ikeda, when he was Japan’s Prime Minister from 1960-1964. Shipbuilding and repair replaced the town's enden salt-making business, which could not compete with the new technology adopted elsewhere of using electrical power to extract salt from seawater. However, Takehara's central historic district remains and is one of only two areas in Hiroshima prefecture designated a Significant Cultural Streetscape by Japan’s Agency of Cultural Affairs. Its well-preserved collection of traditional merchant architecture tells an interesting story.
As the lowest class in the highly-structured society of the Edo era, merchants were restricted from displaying their wealth by sumptuary laws. This included rules limiting the width of the street frontage and height of the buildings. To distinguish their warehouse-residences and demonstrate their wealth and status, the merchants competed by the size and design of their tiled roofs (kawara) and the elaborateness and decoration of the lattice-work (koshi) fronting their homes and businesses.
Freed of these restrictions following the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and old feudal order in 1868, the warehouse-residences of Takehara's merchants became larger and more extravagant during the Meiji era. Many of these newer structures were built prominently along Takehara’s main street, and social competition through architectural design and details intensified. The framing of the second-story windows became more decorative and the lattice-work more fanciful. New styles of roof tiles were developed, and the buildings became more colorful.
The Morikawa House
The last great warehouse-residence complex to be constructed in Takehara was the Morikawa House in 1916, which was built on land that had once been the first salt field during the Edo era. Similar to the popularity of the colonial revival style of architecture among the newly-rich in the United States at the same time, the Morikawa house used the Edo architectural style to showcase the family's prominence and wealth, harkening back to an earlier era for status and legitimacy. The house has a massive roof and large courtyard garden, and is composed of structures from Edo-era samurai houses, including the front gate, the main part of the house, and an elegant tea house in the garden, which were moved here from other locations. Other interesting details include the art nouveau transoms in the reception rooms that were added over time. The Morikawa House is open to the public daily 9:00 to 17:00 except for the year-end holiday from December 29 to January 3. Admission is ¥300.
Story & Photos: Tom Schiller
Takehara 竹原
Hiroshima Prefecture 725-0026
Getting There
Takehara is surprisingly easy to get to. There are hourly flights from Tokyo's Haneda Airport to Hiroshima Airport, which is located in the hills behind Takehara, and from there it's only a 20-minute ride to the town's center. There are shuttle buses to take you from the airport to Takehara's train station; taxis to any location you want to go to in the city. Or you can take the Sanyo Shinkansen bullet train to the city of Mihara and change to the local Kure Line. Coming from Hiroshima you have the option of the local Kure Line that travels along the coast or highway buses that offer a faster one-hour journey to Takehara.
