Walking the Narrow Streets of Kurashiki

Kurashiki is one of the most famous and visited tourist locations in the Prefecture of Okayama. Its city center offers a large variety of activities in a relatively small area: shrines and temples and many typical Japanese buildings, cultural facilities and traditional shops, cafes and gourmet heavens, and a city block called Bikan Chiku ("Beautiful District") and remained practically intact for centuries. It is a pleasure to get lost in its narrow streets filled with lovely little colorful shops. One of these streets takes you to an apparently not-so-traditional Japanese building made of red bricks with an iron gate and a street light like in Narnia? What can this be?

The Charm of Historical Buildings

It is Ivy Square, as this place has been appropriately called in 1974 after its large-scale restoration. The iron gate is actually the West Gate to this kind of citadel composed of several buildings very different in size, color and construction technique, but mostly covered by lush green walls of ivy, hence the name of the place. The bricks and wooden buildings, the stone paths, the waterways, everything makes somehow feel like the time stopped at the end of the 19th century when Japan knew industrialization from Western Countries.

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A Bit of History

As the bilingual information boards state at the entrance, the site stands out as an important place for the city for no less than 400 years, and on its ground sat several important buildings until in 1888 Kurabō Inc. founded here a cotton mill. The ivy was extensively planted during the 20s in order to grow green barriers on the factory walls: it was a brilliant idea to screen the buildings and provide them with the necessary thermal insulation from the hot Sun on summer days. The factory prospered until the second world war, after which the facilities were abandoned for more than 20 years. The first redevelopment projects are dated to the end of the 60s, the actual works started in 1972 and took two years to transform the former mill into a new place for tourism accommodation and relaxation.

Keeping the Memory of the Past

The current configuration of Ivy Square is really interesting for how they were able to completely renovate the place while maintaining its 19th-century industrial atmosphere. Most of the walls are the original ones, with their peculiar "English Bond" brickwork (alternating rows of heading and stretching bricks) revealed under the mortar, saw-tooth roofs, exposed beams and trusses painted in white, wave-shaped ceilings, semi-circular windows and so on: walking inside Ivy Square is like walking on the set of a historical film. The symbol of the building is its central square, now used for parties and events, but once occupied by a large building whose wooden pillars did sit on stones still visible among the former roof tiles used for the pavements.

Ethical and Good Tasting

The main entrance of Ivy Square is not the west one, but a grand portal on the east side of the citadel, which leads to the entrance of the hotel and cafe & restaurant Tsuta. The latter seems particularly interesting: its spacious, geometric halls are surrounded by transparent sliding doors still mounting the original hand-made glass tiles dated back to the cotton mill. The restaurant offers customers both Japanese and western food with an eye to the SDGs: the menu is composed of local, organic, and seasonal raw materials used to prepare refined dishes.

Tel.: (+81) 086-422-0173

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Encounter of Cultures

Ivy Square is free to visit even if you don't book there and offers many interesting spots. Walking within the walls of the citadel is a nice way to enjoy a little time warp, surrounded by green walls and wooden buildings in a curious architectural style called "wayō secchū", i.e. a mix of Western and Eastern culture originated at the end of the 19th century. There are various event spaces, a memorial museum, and shops selling traditional local arts and crafts, notably clothes and accessories made with the famous denim of Kurashiki, considered among the first (if not the very first) produced in Japan.

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It's Art Time

Among the various activities offered by Ivy Square, one of the most interesting is the ceramic art class, which is housed inside a large warehouse of the former cotton mill: its large ceiling boasts an impressive system of wooden beams and trusses which is, alone, a good reason to visit the building. Under this remarkable roof, the visitors will find desks, tools and local artisans ready to teach them how to produce some Japanese pottery in various styles. Pay attention that the artefacts need some months to be fired and then shipped (only within Japan), but the class has a little shop if you want to bring home a piece of local earthware anyway.

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Walking the Ivy Streets of Kurashiki

It is really nice sometimes to leave the real world and enter a place out of time: Kurashiki Ivy Square gives you this chance!

Reporter:Mario Pasqualini