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Ashizuri-Uwakai NP, Ehime
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Fishing families could check the harbor from indoors: small openings in the sea-facing stone walls line up with kitchen windows. They are called tomi-no-mado, or “far-view windows.”
The village’s tallest wall is about 7 metres high. A local record credits it to a stone-layer known as 七蔵, who was just 17 when he built it—a remarkable teenage legacy in stone.
Sotodomari was laid out as a branch settlement for younger sons from nearby Nakadomari as its population grew. The homes were all occupied by about 1879, turning a migration plan into a village.
Until around 1955, Sotodomari’s livelihood combined fishing with growing potatoes on steep terraced fields. The village’s stonework supported not just homes, but a demanding hillside food supply too.
A historical account describes roughly 50 households receiving plots of about 60–70 tsubo (around 200–230 m²), with land assigned by lottery. One shared cultivation plot was set aside for every 3 households.
As settlers cut plots into the hillside, they could reuse the stones they unearthed in dry-laid walls—built without mortar. Neighbours also worked through tegae, a local system of helping one another in turn.
Sotodomari’s stonework did more than shield houses: researchers identify 5 kinds, including foundations, windbreak walls and fences, terrace-retaining walls, and stone boundaries built to keep boars out.
A government inspection found very little vegetation on the walls, and residents said they did not routinely weed them. One reason: the walls were built without soil packed into their cores.
Some windbreak walls once rose to the height of the eaves, but were later lowered because they made rooms too dark. Their present-day profile records a practical trade-off between shelter and daylight.
Many houses have been rebuilt, but the stone foundations preserve an older layer of the village. Researchers concluded that many of these base walls date back to the original settlement and are more than a century old.
Look closely along the stone lanes for handmade Hina figures made from small, painted stones. Their tiny, colorful forms add a playful detail to the village’s towering gray walls.
