Nagoya serves up a taste of Japan’s samurai heritage

This un-touristy city has fascinating history and authentic, mouthwatering cuisine, as Kate Crockett finds as she meets artisans and comes face-to-face with rare Edo artefacts

- 

The taxi door automatically swings open on a street corner where there’s a stone torii gate entrance to a shrine, which is shaded by camphor and zelkova trees and dedicated to the goddess of Mount Fuji.

From here, it’s easier to continue on foot, so I follow Meiko, my guide, through streets of wooden homes and whitewashed 18th-century warehouses - the remnants of an Edo castle town.

High up on one building we spot a yanegami (a rooftop altar), believed to offer protection against the disease and disaster - chiefly fire - that have ravaged the Shikemichi district repeatedly in its 400-year history.

We’re on the hunt for Kenichi Fushitani, a master artisan of chōchin paper lanterns - the kind that are ubiquitous in temples and shrines across Japan. It is a craft with a 1,000-year history, yet we are not in Kyoto, or even Kanazawa, but the industrial city of Nagoya in Aichi prefecture, central Japan, better known for cars than crafts.

We find Fushitani - smiling broadly in a happi coat (a lightweight jacket typically worn during festivals) - at Wazamon Chaya workshop in the Endoji Shopping Street, a historic arcade in what was once the heart of Nagoya’s Edo downtown.

A lantern maker of 40 years, Fushitani explains that chōchin are deeply connected with the city. During the Edo era, the seventh lord ordered them to be strung up along Nagoya’s main streets, and with the bamboo, washi, wood and lacquer needed for their construction all available locally, by the late 19th century, Nagoya was Japan’s leading producer.