Spot

Hishio-no-Sato (“Soy Sauce Village”) is a neighborhood of old soy sauce factories. Heavy stones that were used for crushing soy beans are lined up and blend into the townscape. For centuries, these commonly used large stones were indispensable tools in the production of soy sauce, or shoyu in Japanese. The culture of shoyu reached the island of Shodoshima from the Kansai area approximately 400 years ago, as a result of inter-regional marine trade of stone from Shodoshima to Osaka for building moats around Osaka Castle.