Shikemichi, the street of storehouses (四間道) 四間道
After the fire of 1700 the street was widened to seven metres: that way the fire could not jump across.
Shikemichi came into being with Nagoya Castle, completed in 1610, and lived off the Horikawa canal, which flows one block away: the canal was dug to carry materials to the castle building site and then remained the waterway between the port and the city, so the merchants built their storehouses here. The name came later: after the great fire of 1700 the street was widened to four ken (the ken is the unit used to measure Japanese houses, about 1.8 metres), that is, to a good seven metres, to stop the flames jumping from one side to the other. Shikemichi means just that: ‘the street of four ken’. The district was not bombed in the war and came out of it with its storehouses still standing. In 1986 the Municipality of Nagoya protected 2.8 hectares of it as a townscape preservation district. Two rare things survive in the alleys: the yanegami-sama, tiny shrines hoisted onto the roofs of houses, a custom of this region, and a Jizō, the stone statue of the deity people pray to for children.
Aichi
Nagoya, Fushimi, Kintetsu-Nagoya, Kokusai Center (International Center)
