Kami

Kami's Nakaniida settlement stood near the meeting of the Naruse and Tagawa rivers. Its medieval castle had two rectangular moats enclosing an inner area roughly one hundred metres square. Municipal heritage research dates the castle's likely beginnings to the early fifteenth century or later. In the Osaki conflict of 1588, its commander Nanjo defeated Date forces. The castle was taken over during the political settlement of 1590 and probably dismantled during the further reorganisation that followed the Osaki-Kasai uprising.

A different town emerged in the seventeenth century. The present arrangement of the commercial streets began around 1624 and was completed in 1640. Nakaniida merchants brought goods from Kansai by sea to Sakata and then across mountain passes on the Mogami routes. The town became known for its trade in second-hand clothes; dyers also established businesses. Kami's local history thus joins a late-medieval castle site with the development of an inland commercial town.