Imai-cho: Nara's Edo Merchant Town, a Short Walk From Yamato-Yagi

Imai-cho is a merchant town in Kashihara, Nara, where sake and soy sauce breweries stand beside shops set up in old houses. It is small enough to walk end to end in about ten minutes, which suits a slow stroll with stops inside the town houses. In the evening the tiles along Honmachi-suji glow orange. The town was once paired with Sakai as "Sakai of the sea, Imai of the land".

Walking the Lanes: Tiles, Light and Rain

Imai-cho is selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and the walking is the point. Sake and soy sauce breweries sit beside shops that make use of old houses, so a stroll along the lanes moves between working buildings and places you can step into. You can cover the whole town on foot and double back for anything you passed.

Honmachi-suji is the street for the end of the day, when its tiles glow orange in the evening. Chusonbo-dori, where the Takagi House stands, has a street width that feels just right and scenery like the Edo to Meiji townscape, and its atmosphere is outstanding after rain or on a cloudy day.

As you walk, look for decorative roof tiles, insect-cage windows and the hitching posts for horses and cattle. Imai was tied to Sakai through trade with Southeast Asia, and the pair were called "Sakai of the sea, Imai of the land", the two cities that drove Japan's economy from the Sengoku period into the early Edo period.

Small Town Houses to Step Into

The former Yoneya House, on the north side of Nakamachi-suji, is a low town house with a gable roof, tile roofing and a flat-entry front. Inside, an earthen through-passage runs along the east side, with the shimomise in its corner and five living rooms. The reason to step in is that earthen floor, where soft light from the rear and inner gardens grades into darkness.

The Otomura House also faces the north side of Nakamachi-suji, gabled and tiled with a flat-entry front and a low second storey at the front. At the back of the entrance stands a rare single-mouth hearth, reconstructed from excavated remains, and the rooms follow a staggered plan. Its doors slide upward, much like present-day shutters.

In the central part of Honmachi-suji, the Imai Machiya-kan is a townhouse brought back to its original form on the evidence of surviving traces and materials. It was rebuilt with old timber reused, earthquake resistance added and fire-prevention equipment improved, so what you walk through is both an old house and a careful reconstruction of one.

The Imai Landscape Support Center is two town-house units joined under one roof. The east part has been restored to its appearance as originally built and can be viewed, while the west part has a floor laid over the old earthen floor and houses the townscape preservation office. Soft light enters this building too, which pairs it with the former Yoneya House.

Merchant Families, a Museum and Shonenji Temple

The Ueda House served as one of the town's elder houses, a role it shared with two other leading families, and in the early Edo period it also ran a sake brewing business. Together with other influential merchant houses it issued Imai-fuda, a measure of how much weight these families carried in the town.

The Toyoda House carries a story in its storeroom: the threshold is raised by one step, and this high threshold is the origin of the phrase "shikii ga takai", literally "the threshold is high". Its roof is hip-and-gable with main roof tiles, its eaves are high, and old-style methods of construction survive in places such as the storeroom structure.

A museum in the town displays commercial-house furniture, wedding furnishings and furnishings collected from warrior households, together with old documents that record the relationship between merchants and the warrior class. Its holdings run from the Edo period to the Meiji period.

Shonenji temple has a main hall designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan, and it holds a set of old documents, one thousand one hundred and thirty-four items in all, that carry the same designation. Its drum tower is a two-storey structure with a hip-and-gable roof and kato-style windows on all four sides.

Sake, Sweets and Old-House Shops

The Kawai sake brewery dates from the Edo period, and the ground floor of its main house, a nationally designated Important Cultural Property, can be visited freely. The Kawai house has run as a sake brewery under its shop name since the early Edo period and still brews today, and its exterior second floor is finished in white plaster with a round window.

From about spring to October, outside the brewing season, the exhibition room of rare sake-brewing tools can be viewed free of charge. For something to eat on the walk, a sweets shop grills its mitarashi dango after you order.

Two of the shops show how the old houses are being reused. One, in a renovated old house, displays handmade works by about eighty artists, and another is in a row house renovated from a building a hundred and fifty years old. With the breweries, they turn a preservation district into a town that still works.

Getting to Imai-cho

Leg	How	Time or charge
Kintetsu Yagi-nishiguchi Station to Imai-cho	On foot	About 5 minutes
JR Unebi Station to Imai-cho	On foot	About 8 minutes
Kintetsu Yamato-Yagi Station to Imai-cho	On foot	About 10 minutes
Machinami Hiroba parking lot, passenger car, 30 minutes or less from entry to exit	Parking	Free
Machinami Hiroba parking lot, passenger car, up to 1 hour	Parking	200 yen per use per day
Machinami Hiroba parking lot, passenger car, 2 hours or more	Parking	520 yen

Whichever of the three stations you arrive at, the town is a short walk away, and by car the lot is charged by the time between entry and exit.

New to rural buses and one-man trains? See how to ride them, step by step.

Hours and Fees

What	Hours or fee	Note
Imanishi House	Adult 500 yen	Admission price
Imanishi House	Middle school age and younger 250 yen	Admission price
Imanishi House	Group of 10 or more 400 yen	Admission price
Takagi House	400 yen	Average visiting cost
Otomura House	9:00–17:00	Daytime
Otomura House	General admission 400 yen	Admission price
Former Yoneya House	9:00–17:00	Closed for lunch from noon to 1:00 pm
Imai Machiya-kan	9:00–17:00	Closed for lunch from noon to 1:00 pm; closed December 25 to January 5
Imai Landscape Support Center	9:00–17:00	Closed 12:00–13:00
Museum in Imai-cho	10:30–16:30	Last admission 16:00; closed December 28 to January 4 and occasionally at other times
Kawai sake brewery	9:00–16:00	Daytime
Brewery tool exhibition room	Free outside the sake-brewing season, about spring to October	Rare sake-brewing tools

Several of the town houses close for lunch, and the museum keeps a later start and an earlier finish than the houses.

If you would rather follow a guide through the lanes, a few guided tours are offered in Kashihara. The orange glow on the Honmachi-suji tiles comes in the evening, which is easier to catch with a night at a place to stay near Imai-cho.