There are shopfront-facade buildings mixed in among the townhouses. Honmachi in Iwamura is the merchant street of a castle town, running up a gentle slope, and along it kanban-kenchiku stand between the traditional houses. A kanban-kenchiku is a building whose front alone was rebuilt in a Western manner during the Shōwa years; look at one from the side and it is still a timber townhouse, unchanged behind the first two metres.

Iwamura was designated an Important Preservation District in April 1998, and sake brewers and a castella maker trade along the street. Iwamura station on the Akechi railway is within walking distance of the street, Ena station is about twenty-five minutes away by car, and Nagoya roughly an hour and a half, which puts the town within reach of a city without being absorbed by one. The castle site is at the top of the slope, and this street exists because goods had to be carried up to it — the commerce came second, after the road.

Rebuilding only the frontage was a way of looking new without paying to be new. It is the answer of a period in which a shopkeeper could not afford to rebuild but could not afford to look outdated either, so a street with these facades in it shows how the town came through a turn in the economy. That the preservation designation covers them as well as the older houses is the right decision. They are part of the record, and the fact that they are visibly cheaper than the buildings they were attached to is the most informative thing about them. A district that preserved only its best decades would be telling half a story.