The hedges are sawara, an evergreen. Nakachō in Hirosaki is the samurai district north of the castle, and what runs along its streets is a combination of black board fencing and sawara hedging. Sawara holds its foliage through the winter and grows densely, so in a place with this much snow the hedge does not go bare in January — the screening it provides works for twelve months rather than seven, which is the whole reason for choosing it.

Four samurai residences are open to the public, among them the former Iwata house, and going inside is the only way to see how the plan of the rooms relates to the garden they look onto. Nakachō was designated an Important Preservation District in May 1978. It sits inside a city of about a hundred and sixty thousand people, so shops and hospitals are within walking distance and this is an ordinary neighbourhood rather than an isolated site. Snow is heavy enough that hedges are sometimes framed before winter to stop the weight from forcing the branches apart.

In snow country, a samurai quarter is decided by the species of the hedge. A deciduous planting would let the winter through and leave every garden visible for months; building the fence higher instead would simply collect drifts against it. Choosing something evergreen and dense was the answer that survived. The point generalises further than it first appears. Two districts of the same type, built for households of the same rank in the same century, look different in the north and the south, and the difference begins not with taste or wealth but with what will grow through a winter.