Okayama to Kojima by Train

The railway system of Okayama Prefecture may be not as extended and complex as the ones of Osaka or other large cities, but it is quite efficient and widespread enough to reach the countryside areas too, including the Kojima peninsula, the southern area of Okayama. From Okayama Station, you can find a train bound for Kojima Station literally every 20 minutes or less from morning to evening and taking you to your destination usually in about 20 to 30 minutes (it depends if you take an express or a normal train). Leave the station and go north following the signals to reach the Kojima Public Hall: that's the starting point of our route.


711-0921, 1 Kojima eki-mae, Kurashiki City, Okayama

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Kojima Jeans Street

For many people in Japan, when you say "Kojima" you say "denim". The area is in fact regarded as the birthplace of denim in Japan: as at the end of the 19th century Kurashiki started to develop as an industrial city (we talked about it when we visited Ivy Square ), the Shimomura Spinning Works in Kojima neighborhood, already famous for its large salt evaporation ponds reclaimed from the sea, specialized on textile manufacture and in particular on the production of Western clothing, tabi socks and school uniforms, and by 1965 turned to the denim business with success. Although Shimomura does not exist anymore, over 100 small and medium firms took its place currently producing and selling high-quality denim clothes. Many of these shops and design studios sit on Kojima Jeans Street, often in historical buildings.


711-0913, 2 Ajino, Kojima, Kurashiki City, Okayama

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Learning from Jeans

It is very nice to enter these shops as many of them are not just selling places, but fashion design studios too, offering the visitors small exhibition areas and even workshops where to learn how to produce and dye the denim into the indigo produced with the leaves of local plants of Persicaria tinctoria. There are even coffee shops selling denim-inspired blue-colored drinks and ice creams!

An Obelisk and a Villa

The end of Kojima Jeans Street is marked on the south side by a small park featuring… an obelisk?, and on the north side by a large estate named Former Nozaki Villa. The two places are connected, as the 12-meter-high obelisk has been erected in 1892 to commemorate Nozaki Buzaemon, the entrepreneur who in 1829 started salt production in Kojima making the area rich and famous all over Japan, and patriarch of the Nozaki family, whose villa was completed in 1896 and opened to the general public in 1987.

711-0913, 1-11-19 Ajino, Kojima, Kurashiki City, Okayama

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Former Nozaki Villa

The villa, still owned by the Nozaki family and managed by a cultural foundation, has been designated as a National Important Cultural Property in 2006 thanks to its historical and artistic heritage. Its premises are remarkably extended, including a living area composed of a cluster of very rich and elegant buildings, a large garden, and a working area with some warehouses to store the salt. Currently, the spaces of the buildings and the garden are often used by contemporary artists to display their works, while the working area keeps a collection of early-20th-century memorabilia of the Nozaki family.

The Villa's Garden

Nozaki's garden is particularly interesting as it is a not-so-common example of a fin-de-siècle bourgeois garden in Japan. It is composed of a variety of areas, all different and all combined together to convey a feeling of opulence to the visitor, and all rich in flowers and trees. The complex alternation of large and narrow spaces, light and shadow, dirt and moss, as well as the many buildings (including small Shinto shrines and tea houses) are really remarkable features. Hints: do not miss the small ceramic animals on the hill and the suikinkutsu (buried fountain making sounds when water drips inside).

Outdoor Time, Indoor Time

Behind the last tea house, the atmosphere dramatically changes as the route takes the visitor to the working area. The narrow path runs between the back of the buildings and a steep hill (contained by a stone wall), where there are some rooms carved into the rock: some of these are laboratories and cellars to stock the salt, but there are also modern facilities like a bathroom with a brick bathtub too. The house kitchen shows how it felt like to be in a wealthy family in late-19th century Japan: appliances from overseas, elegant tableware, coffee and tea sets in glass-door cabinets and much more in large rooms covered by impressive beams.

Dolls, Dolls Everywhere

"The last part of the villa includes some kura (fortified warehouses) used to store the salt. One of them is used for a permanent exhibition about salt production, and the others for temporary events. We visited the Former Nozaki Villa in early March finding a splendid display of innumerable Hina dolls (dolls used to celebrate Girl's Day on March 3) both here and in the villa's annex, which itself features a very sober yet fascinating garden.

Kojima really seems like the perfect place to enjoy a nice day of relaxation and culture. And now, let's eat a denim-blue ice cream!

Thank you to Martino who modeled for these pictures."

711-0913, 1-8-34 Ajino, Kojima, Kurashiki City, Okayama


Reporter:Mario Pasqualini