Marugame, Kagawa

The ferry to Shiwaku Hontō leaves from the port below the castle walls, and the schedule is not particularly convenient. That pause — the waiting, the crossing — sets the pace for Marugame. The city sits on the northeastern edge of the Marugame Plain, edged by the Seto Inland Sea and dotted with irrigation ponds, with Iino-yama rising in its distinctive cone shape above the low rooftops. Marugame-jō, rebuilt in the Keichō period, still anchors the town from its stone base, and the streets below it carry the residual geometry of a castle town.

The craft most associated with Marugame is the uchiwa — the flat, non-folding fan — produced here in quantities that account for the vast majority of Japan's supply. The making of them is quiet, workshop work, bound up in the ordinary fabric of the city rather than displayed for spectacle. Alongside the fans, the food runs practical and direct: sanuki udon, served in the plain style the region has always preferred, and hone-tsuki-tori, bone-in roasted chicken, eaten at tables with little ceremony.

Across the water, the island neighborhood of Kasajima on Hontō preserves the streetscape of Edo-period shipping merchants — the Shiwaku sailors who crewed vessels across Japanese waters and whose administrative headquarters, the Shiwaku Kinbansho, still stands as a museum. The Taisho-era Akitora-no-Yakata building in town serves as a quieter counterpoint: gallery space, cultural classes, a place where local history surfaces without much fanfare.