The houses stand at an angle to the road. In the lanes of Kuroe the frontages are not square to the street but turned, so that seen from above the row has the profile of saw teeth. The explanation given locally is frontage: cutting the plots diagonally allowed more shopfront to be fitted along a limited length of road. From street level the effect is a wall that advances and retreats in steps rather than running flat.

Kuroe is a Kishū lacquerware town, with workshops and shops still operating in it. At the Uruwashikan, the local industry hall, you can try maki-e decoration, and a walking map of the district is given out. Kainan station is close and Wakayama city about twenty minutes away, so this is commuting distance as well as a craft town; workshop premises come onto the market from time to time. The angled frontages leave triangular gaps in front of each house, and those gaps have been put to use: plant pots, stacked goods, the things that accumulate where there is a little space nobody planned.

Ingenuity under a shortage of land usually shows up in shape. Turning entire buildings off the square in order to gain frontage is a fairly drastic solution, and the saw-toothed street it produced is now the thing Kuroe is recognised by — which was certainly not the intention. The row was awkward when it was built and it is awkward still; nobody would lay out a street this way given a level field and a free hand. A form adopted in full knowledge of its inconvenience sometimes ends up, generations later, as the face a town shows to everyone else.