Imaicho

This guide to Imaicho in Nara walks the fortified merchant quarter once said to hold seven in every ten gold coins in Yamato province. It follows the cotton merchants, moneylenders and sake brewers behind these lattice fronts, the apprentices who slept in cramped crawl spaces above the storerooms, and families like Kawai, Takagi and Kometani whose businesses lined the street. It also traces the Imanishi family, appointed by the shogunate to govern the town from a residence built around 1650.