You can see the lacquering rooms from the street. Kiso-Hirasawa is a town of nushiya — lacquerers' townhouses — strung along the old highway, and many of them are arranged so that the working room is visible from the pavement. The plan runs front to back: shop on the street, lacquering room behind it, and at the far end the urushi-buro, the damp cabinet where the work is left to cure. From outside you see several dozen long, narrow buildings in a row, all of them the same depth for the same reason.

Lacquer needs humidity in order to harden, which is why it is put away in a damp room rather than left in the air. Kiso-Hirasawa was designated an Important Preservation District in July 2006, one of the few districts on the national list to be listed for lacquer work rather than for trade or lodging. Shiojiri is about forty minutes away by car, premises with a lacquer workshop attached come up for sale from time to time, and the winters are cold. Narai is close by on the same road, with no pass between them, and the two towns divided the trade a long time ago: the post town sold, and Hirasawa made.

Lacquer cannot be hurried, because the drying takes the time it takes. The way to work is therefore to have several pieces at different stages and move between them, and that requirement decided the depth of these houses and the order of the rooms inside them. The floor plan is a process chart. When you can see into a workshop from the street here, it is not because somebody decided to be open with visitors; it is because the building was always shaped that way.