History

Kawachiya (now Miyakehonten), founded in 1856, started making sake in 1902, the same year that Kure became incorporated as a city.

This road which appears in the animation In This Corner of the World has a slightly different appearance nowadays.

Navy sailors who disembarked at Kure often whiled away shore leave at the facility depicted in this scene of the animated film In This Corner of the World.

At military ports like Kure where many battleships congregated, gunpowder was color-coded so each ship’s gunners could identify where their shots landed. In this dramatic scene from In This Corner of the World, Suzu witnesses these colored bursts during an air raid, and envisions paint daubs in the sky.

“Aki Monto” is a term for people living in Aki no Kuni (now part of Western Hiroshima Prefecture) who adhere to a Japanese branch of Buddhism called Jodo Shinshu. “Aki Monto” have a custom of decorating their family graves with special paper lanterns during the Bon Festival in summer.

In WWII, 7-8 meter tall “blindfold fences” were built along the Kure Rail Line to hide the shipyards during the construction of the Battleship Yamato, as seen in the animated film In This Corner of the World.

The Mitsugura warehouses appear in several scenes of the animated film In This Corner of the World, such as when Suzu goes to the black market to buy sugar.