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Sennen-zake Kikkawa

salmonshiobiki-zakemachiyaMurakamifood culture

Niigata · Murakami

38.2243°N, 139.4786°E

Murakami has been a salmon town since the Heian period, and in the eighteenth century a retainer named Aoto Buheiji worked out that leaving a stretch of the Miomote river to spawn undisturbed would keep the run going — one of the earliest documented fishery conservation schemes anywhere. The town has more than a hundred ways of cooking the fish and treats none of it as waste.

Kikkawa is the shop where you can see what that means. Inside a 130-year-old machiya, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, around a thousand salted salmon hang head-down from the beams of an open-roofed hall, drying in the sea wind that is let through the building on purpose. The fish are shiobiki-zake, salted and air-dried through the winter without refrigeration, additives or preservatives. Walking in and looking up costs nothing, and staff will explain the process.

Essential Information

Opening Hours

9:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Closed: Closed January 1

Entrance Fee

Free (shop and drying hall) | Izutsuya salmon courses ¥3,550–8,900 | Harako-don ¥6,750

Best Season

November–February when the new salting hangs and the hall is full | Early March for the machiya doll festival

Visit Duration

30–45 minutes for the shop and drying hall; 1.5–2 hours with a meal at Izutsuya

Getting There

Access Information

Omachi 1-20, Murakami City. About 10 minutes on foot from Murakami Station on the JR Uetsu Line. Open 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Closed January 1 only. Free to enter and view the drying hall. The affiliated restaurant Izutsuya serves salmon courses from ¥3,550 for eight dishes to ¥8,900 for twenty-two; the harako-don rice bowl is ¥6,750.

Insider Guide

Premium

**The drying hall is free and most people miss it.** It is behind the shop counter, not signposted as an attraction. Ask, and you will be shown through. **Salmon appears in courses in forms you will not recognise.** Izutsuya's longer sets work through the head cartilage, the kidney, the milt and the skin as separate dishes. The eight-dish course is enough to see the idea; the twenty-two-dish course is a commitment. **Shiobiki-zake is hung head-down for a reason.** Local explanation is that a fish strung up by the neck resembles an execution, which in a castle town was not acceptable. The practical effect is that the belly drains. **Early March for the doll festival.** During the Machiya Ningyo-sama Meguri, roughly seventy merchant houses in Murakami open rooms normally closed to the public to show family doll collections. Free, and the only time much of this architecture is enterable. Dates run roughly March 1 to early April — confirm with the tourist association.

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