Takehara through a film camera: Tamayura's salt-merchant town on the Inland Sea

Takehara is a small salt-and-sake town on the Seto Inland Sea, about ninety minutes by highway bus from central Hiroshima. In 2010 it became the setting of the anime Tamayura, about a girl who photographs her hometown with her late father's film camera. The streets she walks are a short walk from the station.

The merchant quarter the series borrowed

The Takehara Machinami Hozon Chiku (竹原町並み保存地区), the town's preservation district, keeps several blocks of latticed townhouses, white-plastered storehouses and tiled roofs built on Edo-period salt money. Tamayura drew this grid closely, down to the slope of the main street and the stone steps behind it. Many of the houses are still lived in, so the custom is to photograph from the road and keep doorways out of frame.

Fumeikaku and the view over the roofs

Stone stairs lead up to Saihōji temple, where the vermilion Fumeikaku (普明閣) hall stands on a raised platform modelled on the stage at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto. From its railing the whole quarter folds into a single composition, which is why the view recurs in the series. Early mornings are the quietest time to stand there.

A second screen story in the breweries

On the same main street is Taketsuru Shuzō, the family brewery of Masataka Taketsuru, whose life in Japanese whisky inspired the 2014 NHK morning drama Massan. It is a working brewery, not a museum. Treat the frontage as a shop, and buy a bottle if you want to go further than the door.

When the town lights itself

Each year, on a weekend in late October or early November, the Shōkei no Michi (憧憬の路) festival lines the quarter with bamboo lanterns after dark. The festival appears in Tamayura, and it is the busiest night of Takehara's year. A weekday visit outside the festival is closer to how the series pictured the town: a few shopfronts open, and room to wait for the street to empty before you take the picture.

竹原の町並みは、アニメの画面とほとんど変わらないまま残っている。