Mameda-machi is Hita's old merchant quarter, a walkable grid of Edo-period buildings, latticed shopfronts, and white plaster storehouses north of the city centre. It became prosperous when Hita was a tenryo town, administered directly by the Tokugawa shogunate, and the streets still carry that orderly, moneyed feel.
Come for a slow walk rather than a single monument. The shops sell local sweets, crafts, sake, and Onta pottery, and the best corners are the ones where the old facades line up tightly enough to make modern Hita disappear for a moment.