The samurai lived on the high ground and the merchants below them. Kitsuki is a castle town with samurai residences on two facing plateaus and a street of merchant houses running along the valley between them. Suya no Saka and Shioya no Saka face each other directly across that valley, so going down one slope and up the other carries you from one high district to the other, passing through the commercial ground in between on the way.

Because the divisions of rank are arranged vertically here rather than side by side, walking up or down a slope changes the character of the town within a couple of minutes. Kitsuki was designated an Important Preservation District in November 2017, with both plateaus and the valley between them covered by the same designation. This is a city of about twenty-seven thousand people; Ōita is fifty minutes away by car and Beppu about thirty; and the airport is close by, which is unusual for a preserved town of this kind and makes a considerable difference to who visits.

Putting the samurai on the heights was not only about looking down on anybody. The valley floor is nearer the water and the roads, which is what commerce needs, so separating where people lived from where money was made — by height rather than by distance — suited both parties. It is a rational division of ground, dressed up afterwards as a hierarchy of rank, and both readings of it are true at the same time. Walk the two slopes once, in either direction, and the whole structure of the town explains itself without any need for a map or an interpretive sign.