L L B C (13)  Salt field 

🗾   L's Life in a Big City  (13)   🗾

The Kira (吉良) town was a center of a salt industry in the Edo era. Salt was produced at the salt fields (塩田) placed near the coast. It was carried to the Suwa lake (諏訪湖) lake in Nagano Pref. passing through Okazaki city and Asuke (足助) town. The route was called the Sanshu Way (三州街道). We suppose the Way was developed by the item essential for life, salt. 

If you want to know about Asuke, we mentioned something in the article 'Asuke castle.' 

Please visit.

We remember a old time incident, the Nagashino War (長篠の戦). Takeda Katsuyori (武田勝頼) marched from the Suwa lake to the Nagashino castle in Shinshiro (新城) city using the Sanshu Way. The reason of the march of Takeda Katsuyori might be the salt produced in the Kira town. Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康) based in the Okazaki castle might be advantageous situation because of the salt produced in the Kira town.　The salt was fatal product for the every living things. 

If you want to know about the Nagashino War, we mentioned something in the article 'Arquebus 3' and 'Damine castle.' 

Please visit.

The way to produce salt is a complicated process as below. At first, people deliver sea water on the sand all around the huge salt field. And the strong sunlight dries the sand. Then the sand on the salt field became quite salty, or became to contain a lot of salt. People gather the surface sand at one place. And they put them on a huge pot, and add sea water on them, and boil down them until they lose water. After the boiling down, they gather the boiled surface juice which has high concentration of salt. They continue this cycle several times. When the surface juice lose whole water, it became the pure salt. Then, they finally produce pure salt from the sea water.

    

You can learn these things at the Kira-aibajio-no-sato (吉良饗庭塩の里) museum.  https://www.aibajio.jp

At the museum, we can experience a demonstration of salt producing. If you want to join it, you should call 10 or more attendees. The reason we suppose is because the work would be such hard labor. Furthermore, you should also submit the demonstration at 10 days in advance. The participation fee is 500 yen per person at the moment. One more additional information, when it becomes rainy day, you can't do the outdoor actions.