Honcho 1-chome and 2-chome preserve the old line of Kiryu Shinmachi, the merchant quarter laid out in the early Edo period. It is not an open-air museum; the reward is in walking slowly and noticing storehouses, old residences, narrow side streets, and the sawtooth roofs of former textile mills.
The district gives Kiryu its strongest sense of place. Many Japanese cities lost this kind of working fabric to fire, bombing, or redevelopment, so the surviving mix of shrine approach, shopfronts, and industrial buildings is worth the detour.