Kanazawa Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Préfecture d'Ishikawa

Set on Oyama Hill between the Sai and Asano rivers, Kanazawa Castle was for nearly three centuries the seat of the Maeda, the wealthiest daimyō house of Edo-period Japan after the Tokugawa. The site originally held a fortified temple of the Jōdo Shinshū sect, the Oyama Gobō, the power centre of the Ikkō-ikki leagues in Kaga Province, until it was taken by Oda Nobunaga's troops in 1580. Maeda Toshiie settled there in 1583 and undertook a thorough transformation of the stronghold. The keep, struck by lightning in 1602, was never rebuilt; turrets, long galleries and gates took over its role. Ravaged by fire several times, the castle lost most of its buildings in 1881, when it was serving as army barracks. Only the Ishikawa-mon gate and the Sanjikken Nagaya storehouse have survived. Turned into a prefectural park in 1996, the site has been the subject of a major programme of wooden reconstruction using traditional techniques: the Hishi-yagura turret, the Gojikken Nagaya gallery, and the Kahoku-mon and Hashizume-mon gates. Visitors especially admire a remarkable variety of stone walls, roofs covered with whitened lead tiles and namako-patterned walls, just steps from Kenroku-en garden.