Perry Road

Perry's sailors marched this way to Ryosen-ji more than once while they negotiated the Shimoda Treaty, the 13 supplementary articles to the Kanagawa Treaty. On the first day of talks, 13 May 1854 by the old calendar, about 300 sailors with fixed bayonets paraded behind four cannon and a band, to the astonishment of the town. The treaty was signed in Ryosen-ji's main hall on 22 May, and the Japanese delegates are said to have sat on stacked tatami so their eyes met those of the Americans in chairs.

The lane keeps the look of Shimoda's old pleasure quarter from the days when songs counted three thousand ships in and out of the port. Stone paving runs beside the Hiraname River under a line of willows, with stone balustrades and gas lamps. The houses use namako-kabe, walls of flat tiles set in raised white plaster joints that look like sea cucumbers, and Izu stone, which is soft to carve and resists fire. Most of them date from the late Edo period through Taisho. Shizuoka gave the lane its top townscape award in 1994.

Ryosen-ji keeps a treasure museum of Shimoda's history and re-enacts the treaty signing during the Kurofune Matsuri each May. Choraku-ji, where the Japan–Russia treaty was signed, and Shimoda Park, known for its hydrangea festival, sit in the same district.