The street of latticed houses runs about five hundred metres. Kanayamachi in Takaoka is a foundry workers' district, its houses fronted with senbon-gōshi, the fine thousand-slat lattice, along a stone-paved road. The district began in 1609, when Maeda Toshinaga brought seven casters in from elsewhere in his domain and opened a foundry here; four hundred years later, workshops producing copperware are still on the same street. It was designated an Important Preservation District as a foundry town in 2012, and some of the shops will let you cast a small piece of bronze or pewter yourself.

A short walk away, Yamachōsuji is a street of storehouse-built merchant houses, so the two halves of the old town — the artisans and the traders, the fireproof street and the working one — can be walked in one go. Shin-Takaoka station is close, Toyama is about forty minutes by car, and premises with a foundry attached come onto the market from time to time, which is not a common listing anywhere else.

A lattice of that fineness works in one direction. From inside you see the street clearly; from the street you see very little of the inside. For a district of casters that was a sensible arrangement: put the workshop on the frontage, keep the hands out of view, and let the noise do the advertising. The houses now trading as shops have thrown those lattices open and work with the light coming straight in, which means the face this street turns to the passer-by has changed, quite recently, after four centuries of not changing.