Kurashiki City 倉敷市

The city of Kurashiki (“storage place”), located in western Honshû near the Seto Inland Sea, is home to nearly 460,000 people today. Founded at the end of the 16th century, the town quickly developed into an important rice transhipment centre during the Edo period (1603-1868), which was directly administered by the Edo government due to its economic importance. The picturesque old town of Bikan-chiku – with its whitewashed former warehouses (kura) converted into museums, souvenir shops, boutiques and cafés – still bears witness to that era. The Ôhara Museum of Art was the first collection of Western art to be permanently exhibited in Japan and the Kurashiki Ivy Square, a complex of brick buildings built in 1889, was the site of the first modern cotton mill in Japan.