Tombai-bei Walls Street, a back street in Arita Town
This area, back street in Arita, is called “Tombai-bei Walls Back Street”. These back streets in this area are especially narrow. However, the local cars may swiftly pass by your side. So please mind those cars during this tour.
Such a wall can only be seen in Arita. However, in the area of Hakata Fukuoka, there is a wall called Hakata wall, image below this paragraph, which Hideyoshi Toyotomi ordered to build, reusing the remains of the town’s buildings that had been destroyed during the war.
On the other hand, the Tombai walls during the Edo period were made by embedding fireproof bricks in kilns in red clay.
What is Tombai?
The word Tombai refers to these fire-proof bricks. Although the bricks are fire-proof, they are exposed to high temperatures and are in use for around ten years. By then, the kiln has aged so much that it gets demolished.
The bricks, kiln tools, and other items that are left at that time are embedded in red clay and reused.
Actually, the role of this fence was a blindfold so that you could not look into the potter’s technique. Originally, it was about 2 meters high, but in the Showa period, the passage became taller and the wall became lower than it originally was.
Kiln firing takes 1300 degrees for 40-45 hours and requires 800-1000 bundles of firewood.Currently, almost all gas and electric kilns are used, so it is only possible to use wood to burn kilns in specific kilns and special cases.
Toｍbai-bei walls were come from “Noborigama” the traditional climbing kiln
By the way, the total length of this Tombai walls and the one in Uchiyama district is about 900m. Since there was a big fire in this area in 1828 and the whole area was completely burned down, there are no old documents and the history of the Tombai wall is not known in detail, but most were built after the big fire. . The area around that bench is famous as an Instagram spot, and is popular among foreigners as sustainable and beautiful!
Doesn’t this wall look delicious when you look closely at it? In Saga, there is also a snack called “Tombai-bei”.
