Sakawa Sake Warehouse Street

Sakawa Sake Warehouse Street is the kind of Kochi food stop that locals recommend before any restaurant with a sign in English.

Sakawa was the castle town of the Fukao family, chief retainers of the Tosa domain, and the merchants who settled along its main street built the white-walled storehouses that still line it. The local name is Sakagura no Michi, the road of sake warehouses, because the dominant business was and is Tsukasabotan, a brewery in its fifth century of operation.

The other thing Sakawa produced was Makino Tomitaro, the botanist who described and named more Japanese plants than anyone else. He was born here into a sake-brewing merchant family; the family business closed when he left for Tokyo and its brewery buildings passed to Tsukasabotan, which still uses them. The street is five minutes from the station, free to walk, and includes a preserved merchant house, a former school building and the botanical garden that carries his name.