At the end of a lane there is a shed that once held the domain's boats. Hamasaki stands at the mouth of the Matsumoto River, a port quarter where shipping agents' premises and townhouses run together in a continuous line of lattice. The former Hagi domain boathouse is the unusual survival: stone laid at the water's edge and a roof over it, arranged so that a vessel could be drawn straight up out of the water and under cover without being unloaded first.

Hamasaki was designated an Important Preservation District in November 2001, and the fishing harbour immediately beside it is still working, with boats coming and going on the tide rather than tied up as scenery. This is one corner of the city of Hagi. Yamaguchi city is about an hour away by car and the population of the municipality is in the forty thousands. Hagi is known as a castle town, and among its districts this is the one that shows the working face rather than the administrative one.

Lattice in a port quarter does a different job from a wall in a samurai quarter. It lets the household keep an eye on what is moving in and out along the street while giving away nothing of what is happening inside — open and closed at the same time, which is exactly what a trading frontage requires and what a residence does not. Within a single city, Hamasaki and the samurai district face in quite different directions, and it is the buildings rather than the map that tell you so. One was built to watch the water; the other was built to keep the street from watching it.