First impressions of a Japanese provincial town can be so thoroughly dispiriting as to make you inclined to believe that the developer of the station area set about his task grimly determined to bring a whole new meaning to the concept of drabness. And so it is upon alighting at Omi Hachiman Station and coming face-to-face with its small-scale urban clutter the natural instinct is to clamber back on the train and check out the next stop along Lake Biwa.

With Omi Hachiman, though, it is well worth the effort in getting to see the other side of town. Probably because it lacks a single must-see sight, Omi Hachiman tends to get scant mention in English-language guidebooks to Japan. And yet among Japanese, this place in Shiga Prefecture has no small reputation. Back in the Edo period (1603-1867), Shiga was known as Omi and it was from this region, and in particular from Hachiman, as this town was then known, that the famed Omi merchants would trek across the country, hauling their wares.

Traveling as far as Hokkaido, the Omi merchants dealt in such commodities as fertilizer, medicines, cloth and cosmetics. They also took with them a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a reputation for shrewdness and honesty. They may have begun as humble merchants, but eventually they set up complex trade networks far and wide. More than a few commentators see Japan's modern system of trade and industry as having its roots in the Omi merchants, with such huge corporations as Seibu, Marubeni, Takashimaya, Itochu and Daimaru tracing their origins to these early entrepreneurs from the shores of Lake Biwa.