Yanai Shirakabe Street
licensed photographAsturio Cantabrio / CC BY-SA 4.0

East Yamaguchi · YanaiNo.622★★Open in map →

Yanai Shirakabe Street

— An Edo merchant row under red goldfish lanterns

historyOff the trail — and worth it

A preserved merchant quarter on Japan's Inland Sea coast, a short walk from the station. One stone-paved street of white-walled Edo houses, with the town's red goldfish lanterns strung above it.

  1. FromIwakuni Station
  2. ~45 minJR Sanyo Line, then a 10-min walk
  3. Get off atYanai Station (JR Sanyo Line)
  4. On foot
  5. Yanai Shirakabe Street
Directions ↗

The sweet spot

This is a designated, signposted district, not a discovery. Coaches come, and the town markets its lanterns hard. What it does have is continuity of use: the houses hold working shops and a working brewery rather than exhibits, the street is short enough to walk twice, and outside the August festival the pace of the place is that of a small country town.

Where it is

13 more notes in Yamaguchi · open the map →

What to look for — in walking order

Honmachi-dori(WT-shared) Suhobei / CC BY-SA 1.0
  1. Honmachi-dorithe preserved street itself, stone-paved and lined on both sides with white-walled merchant houses
  2. Kunimori Housea merchant house on the street, designated a national Important Cultural Property
  3. Kanro Soy Sauce Museumthe storehouse of a local soy-sauce maker, open as a small museum of how it is brewed
  4. Yanai Machinami Museumthe town's local history collection, sharing its rooms with a memorial to the singer Shiko Matsushima
  5. Yanai Nishiguraa converted storehouse where visitors can make a goldfish lantern by hand

How to actually get there

  1. Iwakuni Station → Yanai Station (JR Sanyo Line, about 35 minutes).
  2. Yanai Station → Honmachi-dori (about 10 minutes on foot, north).
  3. Walk the preserved street end to end, then go inside the soy-sauce storehouse and the town museum.
  4. Finish at Yanai Nishigura and make a goldfish lantern before walking back to the station.
JR Sanyo Line to Yanai
Iwakuni Station →(JR Sanyo Line, about 35 minutes)→ Yanai Station, then about 10 minutes on foot north. From Hiroshima the same line runs through to Yanai in roughly an hour and a half. Sanyo Line services here are not frequent outside the commuter peaks, so check the return times when you arrive.
Return from Yanai Station
Walk back south to Yanai Station for Sanyo Line trains toward Iwakuni and Hiroshima, or west toward Tokuyama to pick up the Shinkansen. Gaps open up between services in the middle of the day, so read the board before you start walking the street rather than after.
Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

Yanai faces the Seto Inland Sea, and in the Edo period it was the trading town of the Iwakuni domain — the domain's counting house, in the phrase the town still uses about itself. The Furuichi and Kanaya quarters kept the street those merchants built. About two hundred metres of it survive: two-storey houses turned gable-end to the road, heavy grey roof tiles, and thick white plaster that takes deep shadow. The paving is stone. Shops, a soy-sauce maker's storehouse and small museums still occupy the buildings, and the red goldfish lanterns hang in rows above the road.

How to enjoy it

The museums and craft workshops along the street keep ordinary daytime hours, so the middle of the day is when the quarter is fully open. Leave time to go inside one of them rather than only walking the length of the street. On 13 August the quarter and the road up from the station are hung with lit lanterns for the goldfish lantern festival, which runs on into the evening.

Background & history

Yanai grew as a port on the Inland Sea and served the Iwakuni domain as its counting house, a role that filled these streets with merchant money. The Furuichi and Kanaya quarters were selected as a national Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1984. The goldfish lanterns are younger than the houses and older than the designation: a Yanai merchant is said to have taken the idea from the goldfish neputa floats of Hirosaki, far to the north, and remade it here in red and white paper.

Before you go

Cash
The street itself is free to walk, and the tourist association offers guiding at no charge. The museums along it charge admission separately, and the lantern-making workshop has its own fee. This is a small town, so carry cash.
Before you go
The museums and workshops keep daytime hours, so a late-afternoon arrival can find the doors along the street already shut. The paving is stone and uneven in places. On the day of the August lantern festival a large crowd is funnelled into one narrow street.
Another way
By car it is about twenty minutes from the Kuga interchange of the Sanyo Expressway. A ferry also links Yanai with Mitsuhama, on the Matsuyama side of the Inland Sea, in about two and a half hours — slow, but a direct way in from Shikoku.
After you get off
From Yanai Station, walk north away from the tracks for about ten minutes. The modern shopping streets give out, and the stone paving and white walls of Honmachi-dori begin.