Uchiko & Ozu: Preserved Merchant Towns

The Towns That Wax Built

In the mountains of central Ehime Prefecture, two small towns preserve a Japan that modernization elsewhere erased. Uchiko made its fortune from mokuro, a plant-based wax extracted from the berries of the haze tree, used in candles, cosmetics, and waterproofing. The wax trade peaked in the late 1800s, and the merchant families who profited built mansions of such quality that the streetscape they created survived intact into the era of heritage protection.

Twenty minutes south by train, Ozu is a castle town on the Hiji River that achieved something unprecedented: it rebuilt its castle keep entirely in wood using traditional Edo-period construction methods, completed in 2004. Where other Japanese castle reconstructions use reinforced concrete with decorative wooden cladding, Ozu Castle is the real thing, mortise-and-tenon joinery, no nails in the structural frame, timber sourced from the same forests that supplied the original builders.

Yokaichi-Gokoku: The Wax Merchant Street

Uchiko's Yokaichi-Gokoku district is a 600-meter stretch of preserved merchant houses, designated a National Preservation District. The buildings date from the late Edo through Meiji periods (roughly 1800-1910) and represent the full hierarchy of the wax trade: grand merchant houses with formal gardens and guest reception rooms, smaller workshops where wax was processed, and the shopfronts where it was sold.

The Kamihaga Residence is the district's centerpiece, a sprawling compound of interconnected buildings that functioned as home, office, factory, and warehouse for the Kamihaga family's wax business. The house is open to visitors (¥500) and includes the processing rooms where raw haze berries were steamed, pressed, and refined into blocks of snow-white wax. The adjacent Mokuro Museum explains the production process and displays the range of products, from temple candles to geisha face powder, that Uchiko wax supplied across Japan.

Uchiko-za: A Living Kabuki Theater

Uchiko-za is a kabuki theater built in 1916 by the town's wax merchants as a cultural gift to their community. The building seats 650 in a traditional configuration: flat tatami seating in the main pit, elevated box seats on three sides, and a hanamichi (runway stage) extending through the audience. The revolving stage (mawari butai) and trap doors (seri) are hand-operated, requiring stagehands beneath the stage to turn the wooden mechanisms.

Unlike most surviving Edo and Meiji-era theaters, Uchiko-za is not a museum, it hosts live kabuki performances, bunraku puppet theater, local festivals, and concerts throughout the year. When no performance is scheduled, the theater is open for self-guided visits (¥400). Walking the hanamichi, standing on the revolving stage, and descending into the understage machinery room where the wooden gears and pulleys wait in the darkness, this is theatrical architecture as living technology.

Ozu Castle: Rebuilt in Real Wood

Ozu Castle's four-story keep was originally built in 1617 and demolished in 1888 during the Meiji government's anti-feudal campaigns. The 2004 reconstruction used historical drawings, photographs, and archaeological evidence to reproduce the original structure using traditional materials and methods. The cost was ¥2 billion, many times what a concrete replica would have cost, but the result is the only castle keep reconstructed in Japan using entirely traditional wooden techniques since the Edo period.

Inside, the structure is immediately different from concrete-reconstructed castles. The floors creak. The air smells of aged timber. The staircases are steep and narrow, as they would have been, designed to slow attackers, not accommodate tourists. The top floor offers views across the Hiji River valley to the mountains beyond, framed by wooden window shutters that slide on 400-year-old design principles. Entry is ¥550, or ¥900 for a combined ticket with Garyu Sanso villa.

Garyu Sanso and Cormorant Fishing

Garyu Sanso (Reclining Dragon Villa) is a masterpiece of Meiji-era residential architecture, built in 1907 on a bluff above the Hiji River by a local merchant who spent ten years studying tea houses and villas across Japan before designing his own. The building is small, just three rooms, but every detail is deliberate: the ceiling heights shift between rooms to create different psychological effects, the tokonoma alcove frames a specific mountain view, and the veranda extends over the cliff edge with the river visible directly below through gaps in the wooden floor.

From June through September, the Hiji River below Ozu Castle hosts ukai, cormorant fishing, one of Japan's oldest fishing traditions. Fishermen in traditional clothing work from flat-bottomed boats, controlling trained cormorants on leashes that dive for ayu sweetfish. Spectator boats (¥5,000 per person including a bento dinner) follow the fishing boats as torchlight reflects off the water and the cormorants surface with silver fish flashing in their beaks. The Ozu ukai is smaller and more intimate than the famous Gifu operation, three boats rather than thirty.