The storehouse walls are finished in black plaster. Suzaka prospered on silk reeling from the Meiji period into the early Shōwa years, and its streets carry heavy storehouses built in the ōkabe manner, several of them plastered black. Reeling is the work of boiling cocoons and drawing the filament off them: it needs water, fuel and a large number of hands, so a town of this size found itself operating plant on a scale out of proportion to its population.

The houses built by the people who made money from it are still standing. Several storehouses have been converted into museums, galleries and visitor facilities, so the buildings continue to be used rather than merely maintained. This is the centre of a city of about fifty thousand; the Nagaden line reaches Nagano station in twenty-five minutes, and everyday services are within walking distance. One of the silk families' residences is open, and it shows the arrangement plainly: the house and the works occupied the same plot, with the family living beside the operation.

The price of raw silk was set by economies on the other side of the world. Because the town's earnings were tied directly to that market, what got built during the good years simply remained standing through the bad ones — nobody had the money either to extend it or to replace it. A street of black-plastered storehouses is therefore a record of the peak and of the collapse at the same time, with the second half of the story written by the absence of anything newer standing beside them. The gap is the information.