Kanazawa

Kanazawa began not with a lord but with a religious league. In 1488 followers of the Jodo Shinshu sect overthrew the provincial governor and ran Kaga province for close to a century as a commoners' domain, with their fortified temple on the bluff where the castle now stands. Oda Nobunaga's armies broke that rule in 1580, and in 1583 Maeda Toshiie entered the castle as lord.

Under the Maeda the domain was assessed at more than a million koku of rice, making it the wealthiest in Japan after the Tokugawa's own holdings. Careful to avoid appearing a military threat, the family spent on culture instead: they imported Noh actors, tea masters, lacquerers, dyers and gold beaters, founded workshops and schools, and laid out the garden of Kenroku-en over generations beside the castle. Merchants filled the streets below, temples were grouped into defensive districts at Teramachi and Utatsuyama, and licensed teahouse quarters were laid out in the Edo period.

The castle burned repeatedly; the Ishikawa gate of 1788 and a long storehouse survive from the Edo period, and turrets and a long warehouse were rebuilt in timber, by traditional methods, in 2001. After 1871 the domain ended and the army took over the castle, and Kanazawa University occupied the site from 1949 to 1989. The city was not bombed in the Second World War, which is why so much of the old fabric and street plan remain. Tourism grew sharply after the Hokuriku Shinkansen arrived from Tokyo in 2015, and the line was extended south to Tsuruga in 2024.

Kanazawa's identity is built on craft. Almost all of Japan's gold leaf is beaten here, in sheets thin enough to be blown away by a breath, and used on temple altars, lacquer and, by modern custom, on ice cream and sweets. Kaga yuzen dyeing puts painted flowers and leaves on silk kimono, Kutani porcelain is known for deep green, yellow and red overglaze, and Wajima lacquer from the Noto coast is sold in the city's shops. Workshops offer short introductions to gilding, dyeing and gold-leaf pressing.

Performing arts follow the same aristocratic inheritance. Noh drama, patronised by the Maeda, is still taught and performed in the city, and the teahouse districts support geisha who perform dance and the shamisen at private parties, with occasional public performances. The tea ceremony is widespread, and with it a sweet-making tradition for which the city's wagashi are admired across Japan.

Local manners are those of a snowy, conservative provincial capital: polite, reserved and proud of the city's escape from bombing and its distance from Tokyo. Winter shapes the year — straw mats on garden walls, ropes on the pines, and a calendar of festivals from the June procession for Maeda Toshiie to the lantern boats of the Asano River. Students from the city's universities keep the nightlife of Katamachi busy.

About 460,000 people live in Kanazawa, in a prefecture of roughly a million. It is the administrative, university and hospital centre of the Hokuriku coast, and its economy mixes public employment, education, textiles and machinery with a tourist trade that grew heavily after the Shinkansen arrived. Craft industries employ far fewer people than they once did but remain central to how the city presents itself.

Most residents live in the flat districts spreading towards the sea and along the two rivers, the Sai and the Asano, in a city where cars are normal and the bus is the only public transport. Everyday shopping is at the covered arcades of Korinbo, the malls near the station and the suburban roadside stores, while Omicho market is used by restaurants and by older households.

The weather governs the rhythm. Rain falls on about half the days of the year, snow tyres go on in December, and the first sunny day in March is an event. Local concerns include the strain of visitor numbers on the small teahouse districts, an ageing and slowly shrinking population like most of provincial Japan, and the recovery of the Noto peninsula after the earthquake of January 2024, which drew many volunteers and evacuees to the city.

Kanazawa eats extremely well, and the reason is geography: a cold sea in front and a wet mountain province behind. Winter brings snow crab from the Sea of Japan, with the small roe-bearing females sold in the market for a few weeks each year, along with kanburi, fatty yellowtail, sweet shrimp, and nodoguro, blackthroat seaperch, usually grilled or salted. Sushi counters here are highly regarded, and the market sells the same fish in bowls over rice.

Kaga cuisine, the formal cooking of the old domain, is served on Kutani and lacquer ware, and its emblem is jibuni: duck or chicken coated in flour and simmered with wheat gluten, mushrooms and vegetables until the sauce thickens, finished with a dab of wasabi. Kaga vegetables — a fat cucumber, a thick-skinned pumpkin, lotus root and sweet potatoes grown on the sandy coast — have protected local names, and fermented specialities include kaburazushi, turnip slices stuffed with yellowtail and fermented in rice.

Sweets are the other half of the story. Centuries of tea ceremony left the city with hundreds of confectioners making moulded dry sweets, bean-paste cakes and seasonal shapes, eaten with matcha or with Kaga bocha, a roasted stem tea. Gold leaf is scattered over sweets, sake and ice cream. Oden is eaten here in a local style, and Ishikawa's sake breweries supply the izakaya of Katamachi.