Kyodo News Members of nonprofit organizations are making strenuous efforts to preserve traditional Japanese structures and townscapes and develop regional communities.
About 40 volunteers are working hard to retain the townscape of the city of Komoro in Nagano Prefecture, where wholesale stores and tradesmen's houses stood side by side along Honmachi street from the Edo Period prior to 1868 to the 1920s.
They organized the Komoro townscape study group in 1998, brought in a professor of architecture and students, and held a workshop to study traditional structures in the city. In 2001, they also opened Honmachi Machiya Hall to preserve an old miso factory.