White Gold: Takehara and the Salt Trade


2019.01.05

NAVITIME TRAVEL EDITOR

In Takehara, salt was a way of life. Salt was the foundation of business empires. Fortunes were won and lost in the trade. The extent of the wealth pulled from salty waters of the Inland Sea is difficult for us to imagine now. Times have changed and there are no longer fortunes to be made in the salt trade, but the traditions are being kept alive.

  • The Inland Sea became a source of salt in the 17th century, and, as the cities of Edo, Osaka and Kyoto grew, the empires of the salt barons of Takehara grew apace. The geography of the Inland Sea was perfect for producing salt and the links to the coastal trade made it easy to ship it around the country. While other regions still made salt the old-fashioned way, boiling down brine, an ingenious innovation allowed the salt makers at Takehara to produce salt at an industrial scale: massive sand-fields along the shore were flooded by the tides, concentrating the briny water which then then cascaded across evaporation pans.

    Takehara turned out enough sel gris at a high enough quality to flood the market and shut out most competition, virtually cornering the market on salt. The landscape of the region was transformed, with the salt flats being spread across the flatlands along the Inland Sea and over stretches of reclaimed coastline. It was from these salt flats that fortunes were pulled, generating now-unimaginable wealth for the merchants of Takehara.

    Under the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868), the wealth of merchants was constantly under threat from the samurai class, anxious about the new capitalist class, meaning that the salt barons of Takehara left behind not extravagant villas but restrained mansions. The Old Kasai House in Takehara's preserved old town is emblematic of the salt barons’ homes, displaying the family’s wealth in ways that were immediately recognizable to their fellow merchants but can be harder to read now.

    Details like the latticework on the edifice would have been legible to the salt merchants of the town, who would have been able to see in it countless hours expended by craftsmen with decades of experience. Inside the home, the polished wood beams on the upper floor hint at the comfortable existence that Kasai Seihachi and his family must have once enjoyed. After visiting the Kasai family house, stroll around the other houses of the district, comparing it to, for example, the Matsuzaka House or Kameda Residence, which have the best examples of the local carved latticework.

    Former Kasai Tei
    rating

    4.0

    14 Reviews
    place
    Hiroshima Takehara-shi Honmachi 1-9-11
    phone
    0846220214
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    The glory days of the salt trade faded, and the merchants moved on to more lucrative business to stay afloat. The death knell of the Takehara trade was the government’s establishment of a monopoly on the trade in 1905; and as the Empire of Japan industrialized and prepared for war, shipbuilding yards replaced the salt fields. By 1960, the salt fields were almost completely gone. The salt monopoly was ended in 1997 and, in the two decades that have followed, there has been a renaissance in very small-scale artisanal salt production. Salt is being made again in Takehara, not far from the preservation district by an NPO that replicates traditional methods—a far cry from the industrial scale of previous years but a fitting tribute to the trade that built the town.

    There are a few places around town to pick up salt made locally, including Murakami Bakery, just down the road from the Hinomaru Photo Studio and quite close to the preservation district (Takehara Townscape Conservation Area, to give it its official name), which sells the Takehara no Shio produced by the Network Takehara NPO—a perfect opportunity to taste the product that built Takehara.

    Murakami Bakery
    rating

    3.5

    3 Reviews
    place
    Hiroshima Takehara-shi Honmachi 1-2-7
    phone
    0846221512
    info
    【URL】https://ja-jp.facebook.com/murakamibakery/
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