Kawagoe

Kawagoe's importance began with the castle. In 1457 Ota Doshin and his son Ota Dokan, who also built the first castle at Edo, raised a fortress here for the Ogigayatsu branch of the Uesugi family, and the plain around it was fought over through the 16th century, most famously in the night battle of Kawagoe in 1545, when the Hojo of Odawara broke a much larger besieging army. After Tokugawa Ieyasu took the Kanto in 1590 the castle was entrusted to senior retainers, making Kawagoe the strongest of the towns guarding the northern approach to Edo.

Trade, not war, made the town rich. Boats carried rice, timber, lime and sweet potatoes down the Shingashi River to the Sumida and into the capital, and returned with goods and fashions, which is how the town came to be called Koedo, Little Edo. Its merchants grew wealthy enough to build in the kurazukuri style, with thick earthen walls, heavy tiled roofs and iron shutters. Kita-in, whose abbot Tenkai was an adviser to the shoguns, received rooms from Edo Castle after a fire in 1638 — the only parts of that castle still standing anywhere.

A great fire in 1893 destroyed about a third of the town. The merchants who rebuilt chose the fireproof warehouse style again, which is why the street looks as it does today. The railway arrived in the 1890s and 1900s, the Shingashi trade faded, and Kawagoe became a commuter city. Preservation of the old street began in earnest in the 1980s, and it was designated an important preservation district in 1999.

The October festival is the centre of local identity. Registered as an important intangible folk cultural property, and listed by UNESCO among Japan's float festivals, it has been held since the 17th century: the neighbourhood associations pull tall two-tiered floats through the streets, each carrying a carved figure of a deity or legendary character and a platform where musicians play flute, drums and bells. When two floats meet, they turn to face one another and the bands compete, a confrontation called hikkawase, which draws the biggest crowds after dark.

Everyday culture keeps a craftsman's streak. The town is known for its sweets, its dyed cloth and its carpentry, and the associations that maintain the floats pass down music and woodwork through generations. Kita-in's rakan figures, carved over several decades from the 1780s, are a local institution, and visitors look for the one that resembles them.

Kawagoe is also used to being looked at. Rented kimono are a normal sight on the old street, television dramas are filmed there, and the town has made an industry of its nostalgia without becoming a museum piece: the buildings hold working shops, and residents live above them. Manners are those of any Japanese provincial city — quiet in temples, orderly queues, and a certain reserve towards weekend crowds from the capital.

About 350,000 people live in Kawagoe, which makes it one of the larger cities of Saitama prefecture. It functions largely as a commuter town: three railway companies run into Tokyo, and a great many residents travel to Ikebukuro, Shinjuku or the office districts beyond each morning, an hour door to door. Around the stations the city is thoroughly modern, with department stores, tower blocks and covered shopping arcades.

The local economy mixes that commuting income with retail, food processing, light manufacturing on the outskirts and tourism, which brings millions of visitors a year to a few streets. Agriculture survives on the plain around the built-up area, above all the sweet potatoes the town is named for in the kitchen, along with rice and vegetables for the metropolitan market.

The rhythm of the week is sharply split. On weekdays the old quarter belongs to residents, deliveries and school children, and shops shut early; at weekends and during the festival the same streets are full, and traffic is restricted. Like much of the Kanto plain, the city is ageing, and the balance between preserving the old buildings, keeping their shops viable and managing weekend crowds on narrow roads is a steady subject of local debate.

Sweet potatoes run through everything. They were grown on the sandy soil around Kawagoe and shipped to Edo, where the town's name became a byword for quality, and the local kitchen still turns them into imo-yokan, a firm sweet jelly; baked whole as yaki-imo; into tarts, crisps, soft-serve ice cream, sweet potato rice and even a pale local beer. Sweet shops along the old street compete in inventing new forms.

Kashiya Yokocho, the candy lane, carries a different tradition: hard boiled sweets, rice crackers, dark brown sugar sticks and long thin ame candies, made by a cluster of small confectioners whose trade expanded when Tokyo's own sweet makers were destroyed in 1923. Dango, grilled rice balls glazed with soy, and croquettes are sold from shop windows for eating as one walks the street.

The town's formal dish is unagi, freshwater eel, split, skewered, steamed and grilled with a sweet soy glaze over charcoal, served on rice in a lacquer box. It became a Kawagoe speciality in the days of river transport, and old specialist restaurants still keep their own sauces. Soba and udon are the everyday counterweight, and Kawagoe's brewing history, both of sake and of a well-known craft beer named for the town's Koedo nickname, adds a drink to go with it.