The district is named after the work. In Yamagata's Dōmachi — literally copper town — workshops still cast iron kettles and the kettles used for tea, which are different objects with different requirements. Casting is a trade that produces more moulds than objects, and the local industrial history museum lays the moulds and the tools out in sequence so that the process can be followed from one end to the other. Sand is packed to form the mould, the metal is poured in, and then the mould is broken apart to release what is inside it. The mould is therefore used exactly once, and behind every kettle in existence there is a destroyed one that took as long to make. Hold that in mind while looking at a finished piece and it changes what you are actually looking at. The surfaces are textured because the sand was, which is a fact you can feel with a thumb.

The district is about ten minutes by car from Yamagata station, within a city that puts both Sendai and Tokyo within Shinkansen reach and handles its daily needs perfectly well on its own. There is no visitor circuit here to speak of, and nobody has troubled to arrange one.

A place that took its name from a trade is not really free to stop doing it. The iron kettles are heavier than they look and are meant to be used daily over decades rather than set out on a shelf. Some workshops still take repairs on pieces their grandfathers cast, which tells you something about the expected life of the object. The city grew around this trade and a bell foundry stood here long before the tea kettles did. Dōmachi is a name of exactly that kind, and so far it has held.