Kurashiki

Kurashiki began as marshland at the head of a shallow bay. From the 16th century onwards, land reclamation turned the inlets into rice and cotton fields, and a canal port grew where the Kurashiki River met the tidal water. In the 17th century the shogunate made the town tenryo — land held directly by the Tokugawa rather than by a daimyo — and it became the collection point for rice and cotton from the Bitchu area, shipped from its wharves to Osaka and Edo. The name itself means storehouse village, and the plastered warehouses with black tiles set in white lattice were built to keep grain and goods dry and safe from fire.

Without a lord, the town was run by its merchant families, who grew rich and built the houses that still line the canal. In the Meiji period that capital went into industry: the Kurashiki Spinning Company, founded by the Ohara family in the 1880s, opened the brick cotton mill now known as Ivy Square, and the family used its wealth on hospitals, a research institute and, in 1930, the Ohara Museum of Art.

After 1945 the city expanded by merger and reclamation. The Mizushima coastal zone was filled in for steel, oil refining and car plants after the war, and the neighbouring towns of Kojima and Tamashima were absorbed into a single large municipality in 1967; Mabi and Funao followed in 2005. Recognition of the old centre as a preservation district saved the canal quarter from the same redevelopment, and tourism grew steadily around it. In July 2018 torrential rain broke a river levee in the Mabi district in the north-west of the city, flooding homes and a hospital and forcing hundreds of rescues from rooftops across the prefecture.

Kurashiki's identity rests on preservation and on patronage. The merchant town survived because residents and the municipality chose early to protect it: the Bikan quarter was made a conservation area, shopfronts were regulated, overhead wires buried and new buildings held to the old scale. The result is a townscape rather than a monument, still lived in, and the city is used to visitors walking through what is also a neighbourhood.

The Ohara family gave the place an unusual cultural weight for its size. Magosaburo Ohara sent the painter Kojima Torajiro to Europe to buy pictures, and the collection he brought back — including El Greco's Annunciation — became the country's first permanent display of Western art. The museum drew the folk craft movement to the town as well, and the Museum of Folkcraft in its storehouses reflects the mingei philosophy of everyday, anonymous, well-made objects.

Crafts remain a working part of local culture rather than a display. Kojima grew from cotton spinning and school uniforms into the centre of Japanese denim, and its indigo dyeing, weaving and finishing workshops supply labels sold worldwide. Igusa rush mats, canvas bags and Bizen-influenced pottery are also made in the area. Local festivals follow the shrine calendar, and residents distinguish sharply between the quiet, tourist-facing old town and the industrial, workaday city around it.

About 475,000 people live in Kurashiki, making it the second-largest city in Okayama Prefecture. The population is spread over a wide area of merged towns rather than concentrated in the old centre: the modern residential districts lie north and west of the station, Mizushima houses many industrial workers, and Kojima and Tamashima keep the feel of separate coastal towns.

The economy is dominated by heavy industry. The Mizushima complex holds steelmaking, oil refining, petrochemicals and vehicle assembly, and is one of the largest industrial zones in the country, giving the city a high output for its size. Textiles remain important through the denim and uniform makers of Kojima, and tourism supports the shops, inns and restaurants of the Bikan quarter. Agriculture on the reclaimed plain produces rice, fruit and rush for tatami.

The daily rhythm follows shift work at the plants and commuter trains to Okayama, which many residents use for work and study. Day visitors fill the canal lanes from mid-morning and are gone by early evening, leaving the quarter to residents. Local concerns include flood protection after the 2018 disaster, the environmental record and future of the Mizushima industries, and the ageing of the outlying districts.

Kurashiki eats from the Inland Sea. Mamakari, a small silver fish, is salt-cured and pickled in vinegar and is the local emblem dish; its name comes from a joke about it being so good with rice that more must be borrowed from the neighbours. Octopus from the strait, sea bream, anago conger eel and sawara, the Spanish mackerel eaten raw here, appear on set menus across the city, and winter brings oysters from the coastal beds.

The prefecture's festival sushi, barazushi, is served in the old town in lacquered boxes, the rice covered with fish, prawn, egg and vegetables. Simpler everyday food includes udon, kake soba and the demi-glace pork cutlet rice that Okayama's diners are known for. Restaurants in converted storehouses tend towards seafood set meals and kaiseki, while the arcades near the station keep the noodle counters and izakaya used by residents.

Sweet things lean on the local harvest. White peaches and Muscat grapes are turned into parfaits, jellies and ices through summer and autumn, and kibi dango, soft mochi dumplings named for the old province of Kibi and sold in boxes printed with Momotaro, are the standard gift. Coffee culture is strong for a small city, with long-standing kissaten in the old quarter roasting their own beans, and sake and local fruit liqueurs are sold in the canal-side shops.