Kusatsu oyster hut

The guide to this Kusatsu oyster hut in Hiroshima opens in 1707, when a fleet of oyster boats from the fishing village of Kusatsu rowed into a burning Osaka to help, and the favor a boat owner named Kakinoya Goroemon later collected for it. It traces how Hiroshima's domain had already turned Kusatsu's oystermen into a licensed guild seven years earlier, with eighteen groups paying silver each year for the right to ship their catch. By the 1740s the guild's roll named dynasties like Mishimaya, Konishiya and Matsumotoya, all competing over the same stretch of tidal mud you can see past the breakwater outside.