A family of merchants, and the story behind them.
The House
Before the fish, there was rice. The family served as rice merchants to the Date clan, lords of the Sendai domain — a relationship carried across generations, evidenced still today: payment records from the Date house remain in the family's keeping, along with works of art received in payment, kept since.
The house itself was opened in Arakawa by the first of our line — the founding generation of what has, across four generations since, remained in the same family's hands. No signboard marked it. Those who came were sent by someone who had come before.
What is offered today is not a service but a continuation — the same attention, unhurried, paid to a single evening at a time. Nothing is explained at length; those who are received understand what they have been admitted to, and the admission itself is the whole of it.
“A house is built because one wants to be surrounded by beauty and not by wreck.”