Stone Wall of the Former Mori Residence (Hamasaka Senjin Kinenkan Imeitei)

A Wall Built for Boats

The Stone Wall of the Former Mori Residence (旧森家住宅（浜坂先人記念館以命亭）石垣, Kyu Morike Jutaku Ishigaki) stands at Hamasaka Honmachi 1208 in Shin'onsen Town, Mikata District, Hyogo Prefecture. Built in stages from the mid-Edo period onward with an extension of 1912, it was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 8 July 2008, with the public notice following on 23 July.

Stone, 164 metres of it, roughly two metres high, tracing the north and east edges of the property with several changes of direction. That length is measured along the bends, not as the crow flies.

What makes it worth a look is not the scale. It is that the wall was never decorative. It held back a merchant's ground against a river that boats used to come up.

Reading the Masonry

Walk the wall from west to east and the technique changes under your eye.

The western and central stretches of the north side are nozura-zumi, dry masonry of rough field stones fitted as found, without dressing the faces. Agency for Cultural Affairs records note that the central portion is somewhat later than the western one, and that its corner quoins are laid in well-formed sangi-zumi, the alternating long-and-short arrangement that gives a corner its strength. It is the sort of detail that separates a wall built by people who knew what they were doing from one thrown up in a hurry.

The eastern part of the north side and the whole of the east side are different work altogether. Built in 1912, they use kenchi-ishi-zumi, wedge-shaped stones cut to a regular face and set in tight courses. Set into this newer masonry are a boat landing and a flight of stone steps down to the water.

Why a Landing Here

The Ajiwara River runs through Hamasaka past this property. It carries less water now than it once did. When it was deeper, shallow-draft takasebune worked their way upstream and unloaded directly at the houses along the bank, and the riverside estates built their walls with that traffic in mind. Downstream, at the boat pool near the sea, kitamaebune of the coastal trade put in during the Edo period. Hamasaka lived on fish, on shipping and on the sake and sewing-needle trades that grew from them.

The Mori family were village headmen and sake brewers, known by the house name Nanakamaya. Their stone wall was the point where the household met the water, and the 1912 landing was a late piece of infrastructure for a river economy already fading.

The House Behind the Wall

The wall was registered in 2008 as part of a group of five structures from the same property: the main house, the Inui storehouse, the North storehouse, the sake brewery and the wall itself. The main house dates from 1888 with an extension of 1907, timber and two storeys under a gabled pantile roof, with a lattice front across both floors.

Since 1992 the complex has served as the Hamasaka Senjin Kinenkan, or Hamasaka Memorial Museum of Notable Predecessors, run by the town. Its second name, Imeitei, comes from the retirement quarters built by the second head of the house, Mori Yoemon; the phrase is said to derive from a passage in the Book of Rites about the gentleman who dwells at ease and awaits his destiny. The buildings had already been picked in 2005 for the first round of Hyogo Prefecture's list of structures important to landscape formation.

Inside, the sake brewery's open interior now works as a hall for changing exhibitions. Displays cover figures connected with the town, among them the mountaineer Kato Buntaro and the poet Maeda Sumitaka. Community terraces adjoin the main house and the brewery. Through the garden windows you can see plum trees and a stone bearing a verse by the haiku poet Mori Ranbi (森藍尾).

Visiting

The wall is outdoor fabric on a public street frontage and along the riverside path, so you can look at it at any hour without paying anything. Doing that on foot is the recommendation: the Ajiwara Komichi, a walkway of about 500 metres along the lower course of the river, passes old houses, temples, the remains of well-side washing places, a lift bridge and a small shrine to the water deity. Local guides note that the masonry along the left bank generally gets newer as you move upstream, which turns the walk into a rough chronology in stone.

The museum inside keeps its own hours: 09:00 to 17:00, last admission 16:30, closed on Thursdays, or the following day when a Thursday falls on a public holiday, and closed from 29 December to 3 January. Admission is 200 yen for adults and 100 yen for children, with reduced rates for groups of ten or more. Annual passes cost 500 yen and 300 yen. Paying the entry fee gets you inside the main house, the brewery hall and the garden, which is also the only way to see the wall from the inner side.

There is no ban on photographing the wall from the street. For interiors, ask at the reception desk.

Getting There

JR Hamasaka Station on the San'in Main Line is about ten minutes on foot. The Ajiwara Komichi lies between the station and the museum, along with the Kato Buntaro Memorial Library and Saikoji temple, so the walk from the platform can absorb an hour without effort. Hamasaka is also the base for the Hamasaka hot-spring group, which the Ministry of the Environment has designated as a National Health Resort Hot Spring, the only one so listed in Hyogo Prefecture.