This was a town for transferring salt. Asuke handled salt brought up from the coast and sent on into the interior, and along the highway beside the Tomoe River stand plastered and latticed townhouses built on that trade. The salt was repacked here — the bales broken down and made up again to a size suited to inland carriage — before going on toward Shinshū, which is why the town accumulated both handlers and storehouses.

Steps run down from the lanes to the river, used both for drawing water and for bringing loads up from the boats, and they are still the quickest way to the water from most of the street. Asuke was designated an Important Preservation District in June 2011, and much of the street is in daily use by the people who live along it. The centre of Toyota is about forty minutes away by car and Nagoya is within commuting range. During the autumn colours the town becomes genuinely crowded, so anyone who wants to look at the buildings rather than at other visitors should choose a different season for it.

A transfer town comes into being wherever a load has to stop. Repacking for horseback required people; people required inns and shops; and the size the town reached was therefore set by a single step in a process — the one where the cargo changed vehicle. That is a precarious basis for a settlement, and everybody knew it. When the step became unnecessary the population fell, as it was always going to do. The buildings, being a great deal harder to move than the trade they were built for, stayed exactly where they were — which is the reason there is anything here to designate.