The corridors run inside the building. The Kawaramachi textile wholesale district is a single block subdivided into small units, with the circulation held indoors, so walking it means walking through a building rather than along a street. The units that once held fabric wholesalers now hold studios, second-hand clothing, small retailers and cafés, arranged along the same internal passages in the same partitions.

Each unit is small and the rent is modest, which makes this one of the few places in the city where a maker can have a workspace of their own without a business plan behind it. This is central Kumamoto, with the tram close by and everything else within walking distance. Tenants continue to turn over, and the mix inside the building is different from year to year. Because the walking is indoors, the weather is irrelevant to a visit, and because nothing is visible from the exterior, there is no way to know what the building contains without going into it — a condition that filters the traffic in a particular way.

A wholesale building is designed for transactions, not for browsing. There was no need for the wide circulation a shop floor requires, so the passages are narrow and the units finely divided — and that specification, drawn up for a trade that has largely gone, happens to be exactly what somebody wanting a small space now needs. The use changed completely and the building did not have to change with it. Its dimensions were already right for the next occupants, which is the actual reason it is still standing while larger and better-known buildings nearby have gone.