Tokushima · TsurugiNo.646★Open in map →
Sadamitsu Two-Tiered Udatsu Street
— Fire walls stacked in two tiers, on a street still in use
A shopping street in Tsurugi where merchant houses carry fire walls built in two stacked tiers, decorated with moulded plaster. Two of the houses are open and both are free, and the street itself is an ordinary public road you can walk at any hour.
- FromTokushima Station
- ~55 minJR limited express + walk
- Get off atSadamitsu Station (JR Tokushima Line)
- On foot
- Sadamitsu Two-Tiered Udatsu Street
The sweet spot
Tokushima has two udatsu streets, and the other one, at Wakimachi on the north bank of the Yoshino river, is the listed and photographed one. Sadamitsu was never turned into a set piece. It is still the town's shopping street, with the old fronts standing among businesses that open in the morning — which is why it is quieter, and also why you have to look up rather than straight ahead.
Where it is
13 more notes in Tokushima · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- Kyu-Nagai Residencethe thatched headman's house set back west of the street, with a small courtyard garden and a rope-draw well
- The two-tiered udatsu runthe stretch of merchant fronts where the stacked fire walls stand one after another
- The plaster reliefs and mushiko windowsmoulded good-fortune images on the wall faces, above barred plaster lattice windows
- Orimotoyathe former sake merchant's house, open free, with a keyaki central pillar and formal rooms behind the shop front
How to actually get there
- Tokushima Station → Sadamitsu Station (JR Tokushima Line limited express).
- Sadamitsu Station → Kyu-Nagai Residence (south on foot, about 15 min).
- Kyu-Nagai Residence → back onto the street and south past the two-tiered fronts to Orimotoya.
- Return the same way, or carry on north to Michi-no-Eki Sadamitsu Yuyukan by the river.
- JR Tokushima Line limited express
- Sadamitsu is a limited-express stop on the Tokushima Line, which runs west from Tokushima along the Yoshino river toward Awa-Ikeda. From the station the street lies south, beyond the town centre, and the walking is flat the whole way. Services are far less frequent than a city line, so read the timetable before you set out rather than after.
- Return from Sadamitsu Station
- The same line runs back east to Tokushima, or west to Awa-Ikeda where it meets the Dosan Line for Okayama and Kochi. Evening departures are sparse in both directions, so if you are pairing Sadamitsu with anywhere else in the valley, settle the last train first and build the day backward from it.
About the place
An udatsu is a fire wall raised above the roofline between adjoining houses, and the ones here are made in two stages — a lower tier with a second stacked above it — a form that is unusual anywhere in Japan. Their street faces carry moulded plaster reliefs worked in the same craft as the wall itself, images meant to wish long life and good fortune on the household behind them. Several of these fronts stand in a run along the old highway, and between them are a barber, a clock shop, a fishmonger. The street is a public road, so walking it costs nothing and needs no ticket.
How to enjoy it
Both open houses keep the same hours, roughly ten in the morning to five in the afternoon, so this reads as a midday walk rather than an early one. If the interiors are the point of the trip, check the closing days first — the merchant's house shuts irregularly, and the headman's house on the third Wednesday of the month. In midsummer the street is given over to the town's Awa Odori and the walking surface becomes a dance floor.
Background & history
Sadamitsu grew as a market and staging point on the road running south from the Yoshino river toward Mt Tsurugi, and its merchants put their profits into frontage. The oldest building open to visitors is the Nagai family's headman residence, raised in 1791 on a compound set back west of the street and now a town-designated cultural property. Orimotoya, the sake merchant's house on the street itself, was rebuilt in the early Meiji years while keeping the old udatsu profile, and it was entered on the national register of cultural properties in 2006.
Before you go
- Cash
- The street is a public road and free to walk. Both of the houses open to visitors — the headman's residence and the merchant's house — charge nothing to go inside, which is unusual for buildings of this kind. The café now working inside Orimotoya is the one place you would actually spend anything.
- Before you go
- The two open houses keep their own closing days, and one of them closes irregularly, so an interior visit is worth confirming in advance. Everything else on the street is private: shops, homes, working frontages. Photograph from the roadway, and expect some shutters to come down well before dark.
- Another way
- By car it is about ten minutes from Mima IC on the Tokushima Expressway, with National Route 192 running along the river just north of the street. Wakimachi's udatsu district sits on the opposite bank a short drive east, and the two make an obvious pair for one day.
- After you get off
- From Sadamitsu Station walk south through the town centre; the old fronts begin where the shopping street narrows, and the headman's residence is signposted a little way west of the road. It is about fifteen minutes on level ground, and the run of udatsu continues south from there.