Uchiko & Ozu: Two Little Castle Towns of the Hijikawa — 2 Days

The Yokaichi-Gokoku district of Uchiko is a single long street of some ninety houses built between the late Edo period and the early twentieth century, when the town grew wealthy on the production of Japan wax, and it has been a protected preservation district since 1982. The merchants' houses are faced in pale ochre plaster, with latticed fronts, deep eaves, sculpted gable ends and the long, narrow plans of working townhouses; many still have shopfronts, and a few are open to walk into. Unlike the famous old towns, Yokaichi is barely touristed and still lived in, and a slow stroll up and down it — pausing for a sweet or a craft shop — is the whole pleasure of it. The natural first hour of a Uchiko morning.

Free; the street is always open, shops generally 9:00-17:00. In Uchiko, a short walk or bus from the station. Allow about 50 minutes.

The Kamihaga residence is the grandest of the Uchiko wax-merchants' houses, the home and works of a branch of the Haga family who were among the largest producers of Japan wax — the pale, fragrant vegetable wax pressed from the berries of the haze sumac, used for candles, cosmetics and polish and exported around the world. The complex of some ten buildings around its courtyards has been preserved with its living quarters, storehouses and the long sheds where the wax was boiled, pressed and bleached in the sun, and the attached museum explains the whole craft that made the town. It is the deepest single stop in Uchiko, and the place that explains why the street outside is so fine.

Admission about ¥500 (approx., 2026); roughly 9:00-16:30. In Uchiko, a short walk up from Yokaichi. Allow about 45 minutes.

Uchiko eats simply and well off its hills and rivers. The town and the lanes around the old street keep cafes and small restaurants in converted merchant houses, where lunch is the local country cooking: rice and river fish, mountain vegetables and the chestnuts and persimmons the area is known for, and dishes built around the local free-range 'jidori' chicken. There are good soba and udon houses, and sweet shops that still make traditional candies. Eaten in a hundred-year-old room off the preserved street, it is an unhurried mid-day pause before the playhouse and the move down to Ozu, and very much in the slow spirit of the day.

A meal about ¥1,000-2,000 (approx., 2026); restaurants generally 11:00-15:00. In the Uchiko old town. Allow about 60 minutes.

Uchiko-za is the town's playhouse, built in 1916 in the golden age of the wax trade as a full traditional theatre — a two-storey wooden hall with a hanamichi runway through the audience, box seating on tatami, and a hand-turned revolving stage and trap doors worked by hand below the floor. For a century it has staged kabuki, bunraku and local performances, and it is one of the best-preserved provincial playhouses in Japan. Note that the theatre is closed for major conservation work until about 2028; during the works only a backstage exhibit is open, letting you see the under-stage machinery and the structure, while the auditorium itself cannot be visited. Even so it is worth the stop for the building and its story, and the exterior is a fine sight on the way through town.

Backstage exhibit during restoration about ¥200 (approx., 2026); roughly 9:00-16:30; auditorium closed until about 2028. In central Uchiko. Allow about 40 minutes.

The Akarengakan, the Red Brick Hall, is the elegant former Ozu Commercial Bank of 1901, a handsome English-bond brick building with a tiled roof that stands at the entrance to the Ozu castle town. The bank is long gone, and the hall now holds a craft and produce shop on the ground floor and a cafe above, a relaxed place to arrive into Ozu in the late afternoon, pick up local citrus and sweets, and get your bearings before checking in. After Uchiko's wood and plaster it is a small change of texture — the same merchant prosperity expressed in Meiji brick — and a pleasant first stop in the second of the day's two towns.

Free entry; shop and cafe roughly 9:00-17:00 (cafe hours seasonal). At the entrance to Ozu castle town. Allow about 40 minutes.

NIPPONIA Hotel Ozu Castle Town is a 'dispersed hotel' that has taken the old merchant houses and storehouses scattered through the castle town and restored them into a scatter of guest rooms, with reception, dining and bar in further historic buildings nearby — so that to stay here is to live, for a night, inside the town itself rather than in a hotel beside it. It is the genuine high end of lodging in this valley, where Ehime has no branded five-star: craftsmanship, quiet, and a strong local table built on the produce and fish of the area. For couples it is the most atmospheric base in the prefecture short of the castle keep itself, which can also be booked as an overnight 'castle stay'. Check in, then wander the lantern-lit lanes before dinner.

Rooms upper-tier (varies by building and season); dining and bar in nearby historic buildings (approx., 2026). In Ozu castle town. Check in and settle, about 40 minutes.

Ozu Castle stands on a bend of the Hijikawa where the river loops around the town, and although its four-storey keep was demolished in the Meiji period, it was rebuilt in 2004 not in concrete but entirely in timber, using old photographs, a surviving wooden model and traditional joinery, with no nails — one of the most faithful castle reconstructions in Japan. Inside you climb steep wooden stairs past exposed beams and pillars to the top floor and its view over the looping river and the tiled roofs of the town. Most remarkable of all, Ozu pioneered Japan's 'castle stay', in which a couple can be received as the lord and lady and sleep a night inside the keep itself, complete with welcome procession and banquet — the most extraordinary lodging in Ehime.

Keep about ¥550 (approx., 2026); roughly 9:00-17:00. On the river in Ozu, a short walk from the hotel. Allow about 75 minutes.

Garyu Sanso is a small villa of astonishing refinement, built over four years in the early twentieth century by a wealthy Ozu merchant on a bluff above the most beautiful bend of the Hijikawa. Every detail is the work of master carpenters and craftsmen — a transom carved as a bat in flight, a window framing the moon, a tokonoma post chosen for a single knot, a teahouse called the Furoan that seems to float on stilts over the river below. It is a sustained essay in the aesthetics of the tea house and the literati villa, on the scale of a jewel, and quietly one of the loveliest buildings in western Japan. After the castle's scale, its intimacy and craft make it the romantic heart of the day.

Admission about ¥550 (approx., 2026); roughly 9:00-17:00. On the river above the castle, a short walk. Allow about 60 minutes.

Take lunch by the Hijikawa in the castle town before an afternoon of rest. Ozu's old streets keep cafes and small restaurants in restored townhouses, several run by the hotel and others independent, where the cooking leans on the river and the surrounding farms — sweetfish and other river fish in season, free-range chicken, rice and vegetables from the valley, and the citrus and chestnuts of the hills. After the morning's castle and villa it is a calm, well-made meal in a hundred-year-old room, and the natural point to slow the day right down before the evening on the water. Save your appetite, too, for the dishes that come with the fishing boats after dark.

A meal about ¥1,200-2,500 (approx., 2026); restaurants generally 11:00-15:00. In Ozu castle town. Allow about 60 minutes.

Ozu's ukai, cormorant fishing on the Hijikawa, is one of the three great cormorant fisheries of Japan and has been practised here for some four centuries. After dark the fishing boats put out under blazing iron baskets of pine fire hung over the water, and the fisherman handles his team of cormorants on their lines as they dive for sweetfish in the firelight; guests watch from pleasure boats drawn up alongside, often with food and drink served aboard. What makes Ozu unusual is its 'awase-ukai', in which the fishing boats and the guest boats drift down the river together so closely that the spectacle unfolds at arm's length. Running only from June 1 to September 20, it is the most romantic possible close to two days in the valley.

Boat from about ¥3,000 per person (approx., 2026); evenings June 1-Sept 20, boards after dark, reservation required. On the Hijikawa below Garyu Sanso. Allow about 90 minutes.