Honke Morimotoya

Nishiki River and Kintai Bridge

Nishiki River runs through the middle of Iwakuni City. The calm and clear water of the river is so beautiful that it is a perfect place for the local children to play in the water. The river is also famous for its fish. The ayu sweetfish that fills many souvenir shops is counted as one of the specialties of Iwakuni even in a book from over 100 years ago. Upstream on the river is a brewery of Japanese sake. This is because the water from the subterranean river is soft and perfect for brewing sake.

The bridge with five arches over Nishiki River is Kintai Bridge (錦帯橋, Kintai-kyō). The bridge is about 15 minutes on foot from Honke Morimotoya. This bridge was built about 350 years ago by Hiroyoshi Kikkawa, the third feudal lord of the Iwakuni Domain, which was created in the Edo period. At that time, the bridge connected the mountain side, where a castle and houses belonging to high-class samurai were located, to the town side across the river, where lower-class samurai and peasants lived.

Why do you think they built such a unique bridge in Iwakuni?

It is hard to imagine from seeing calm Nishiki River on a sunny day, but it has actually been known as a flood-prone river as well. When Hiroyoshi Kikkawa became a feudal lord, the bridge that was over Nishiki River was destroyed and washed away every time it rained heavily. Hiroyoshi Kikkawa wished to build a bridge that would not be washed away somehow, and came up with the idea of connecting wooden arches on top of huge stone walls that could withstand the current. Kikkawa himself led the design and construction to complete this bridge.

The beautiful form―in fact there is no other bridge with the same structure in the world―caught everyone’s attention nationwide, with the famous Hokusai depicting the bridge in ukiyo-e, Japanese art. There is even an anecdote of a princess who wanted to see the famous bridge so much that she tricked a government official.

About machiya, Japanese traditional houses and shops

Honke Morimotoya is a Japanese traditional house built at the end of Edo period.

Stepping foot into the house, people are usually surprised at how deep the house goes. The front of the house facing the street is rather narrow with a depth many times greater than the front width. This is a common basic characteristic to machiya, Japanese traditional houses with attached shops.

Why did machiya come to take a shape like this?

In Japanese, machi of machiya means town area, and ya means a house and attached shop.
As the name represents, a machiya is a house and shop built in the town area. Most of the machiya that are still left in the current era are post Edo period, and they have become common in Japan as a form of merchant house in castle towns and post station towns.

Currently, next to Honke Morimotoya is a parking lot with no buildings, but at the time when the house was built, there were many shops facing the street. The area next door to the right, which is now a parking lot, as well as to the left and across the street, were all lined with machiya with many shops selling all kinds of goods. There were no cars at that time. There must have been a number of people and horses passing by.

I hope you were able to imagine many machiya packed facing the street. As the town developed, so did the number of shops along the street, but the terrain would not change, so they had to limit the width one shop used. The feudal lord, who managed the town, pre-determined site allotments, or defined division lines, for the land so that the entire town could be well utilized, and imposed taxes on merchant houses according to the width of their storefront. This is one of the reasons why many machiya lined up in plots with a narrow front and long depth.