Machiya Street

This guide to Machiya Street on Miyajima near Hiroshima opens in 1625, when the domain's first lord exiled the castle town's brothel keepers to this sacred island rather than shut them down. It follows how a red-light district grew up a few hundred paces from Itsukushima Shrine, on ground where death and birth themselves were forbidden, and how the two rules of the island collided for generations. Walk it slowly, past the narrow wooden facades still standing along the old road.