Kanazawa. The Golden Stream is perhaps the most poetic way of translating that. Certainly better than “golden swamp,” which it often gets translated as. A “sawa,” according to the Daijirin dictionary of the Japanese language, is “a shallow pool, with reeds and other grasses,” or “a mountain valley stream; a flow close to its source.” As I am writing this blog, I shall choose which meaning to use. Also, the founding legend of Kanazawa talks of Imohori Togoro washing his potatoes in a “sawa” (from which came gold, the “kana” part of the name) and people don’t usually wash their food in swamps…
This series of blog entries is going to be a sort of historical guide to Kanazawa for travellers and tourists—well, the former especially. It is for those people that figure that since they are going to visit a country with a long and rich history, very different to that of Europe and its former colonial offshoots, they might as well have a decent idea of what they are looking at and how it fits into the history and culture of the country.
I have lived in and studied the castle town of Kanazawa for almost two decades, and through this series of blog entries, and with the help of other researchers on Kanazawa and the Kaga Domain at the Amane Project, I shall try and bring its history and urban traditions to life using period documents, maps, diaries, and illustrations. These mini-guides are aimed at tourists and visitors to Kanazawa, but hopefully will be of interest to armchair travellers as well.
During the Edo period, which last from 1603 to 1867, and may be thought of as the culmination of traditional Japanese culture, Japan was still intensely rural. The proportion of urban dwellers remained below 50% until the 1960s in fact. However the cities were the focus of government, trade, and culture in a way that the poorer rural areas couldn’t imitate. While rural cultural traditions still survive, the urban ones are generally more accessible to the foreign tourist. Hence the domination of cities in any itinerary of Japan.
The type of city that dominated the Edo period was the Castle Town, the local government centre and home of the regional daimyo, or lord. While Tokyo was originally a castle town, there is very little of the original city left, thanks to its role as the nation’s capital. On the other hand, Kanazawa is famed throughout Japan as a relatively well preserved castle town, thanks partially to the fact it wasn’t bombed in WW2, and largely to the fact that it has suffered serious decline since its heyday. During the Edo period, Kanazawa was in fact one of the largest cities in Japan, at least as large as Nagoya. Now it’s way down at number 37 or something. This decline has saved it from some of the worst ravages of modernisation, and allows us to glimpse something of the original urban landscape even today.
Hence, these blog entries are designed to help give you an appreciation of what you might see as you wander the streets, allowing you to get a feel for how the classical Japanese city was laid out. Of course, being such a large city even back in the Edo period means that Kanazawa is not completely typical, but most of the features are shared with other castle towns.
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Hokuriku Meisho Zue
The following images are the same.
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When some of us from the Amane Project were perusing the contents of the Pre-Modern Historical Archive at the city library for interesting period documents to use in explaining Kanazawa, we came across a series of woodblock prints from 1897, showing, in glorious colour, some of the tourist sights of the city and region as they were back around the turn of the previous century. This strikes me as an excellent place to start our travels around the city. For each 1897 print, I have included a 2009 photograph of the same area taken from the same angle—or as close to the same angle as we could get, bearing in mind the changes in the area around each place as well as a certain artistic licence with regard to angles and perspective and the like.
The first image is the cover, with the title written in elegant cursive script down the middle. Most modern Japanese would find it hard to read, in fact. It says, from the top down, Hokuriku Meisho Zue, or Collection of Famous Hokuriku Places. “Hokuriku,” by the way, is the name given to the area of Japan north of Kyoto—literally, it means “northland,” and covers the modern prefectures of Fukui, Ishikawa, Toyama, and sometimes Niigata, though increasingly less so since the Joetsu bullet train line was opened up and Niigata became more associated with the area around Tokyo. So we’ll leave Niigata out of things. This also makes Kanazawa the largest city in the Hokuriku region, so is no bad thing.
Kenrokuen
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The first picture is called “Scene of the Great Cherry Tree in the Park.” The park in Kanazawa means Kenrokuen. Most guidebooks will tell you that the name Ken-roku-en means Garden of the Combined Six [Ideal Attributes of a Garden]. And so it does. But these are not why the garden is famous. Actually my own opinion is that the garden is terribly over-rated, though it does have some nice corners. The oldest part, not coincidentally. Kenrokuen is what is known as a strolling garden, as opposed to the sort which you viewed from afar, and I usually think the latter are nicer (though I highly recommend the garden at the Katsura Detached Palace in Kyoto). The part shown here is the “Flying Wild Geese Bridge,” which is made up of segments of Tomuro stone cut up into the shape of turtle-shells. Both of these are symbols of long life, so crossing the bridge was considered to bring you long life. Alas, the general age and condition of the bridge mean that it is off-limits now, along with the bridge the people in the foreground are on, so the angle is slightly different. The massive great cherry tree, known as the Morning Cherry (Asahi-sakura) has gone as well. Up until it died in 1927 it, rather than the current Kotoji Lantern, was the main symbol of Kenrokuen.
Kenrokuen itself started out as the pleasure-gardens of the Maeda family, the clan that ruled a vast swathe of the this area throughout the Tokugawa Period: they controlled almost all of present-day Ishikawa and Toyama Prefectures, for a total income in rice of over a million “koku,” or bushels. The land Kenrokuen stands on was originally set aside for the mansions of some of the most important retainers of the Maedas, situated in a place of honour beside the castle, and in the line of attack from anyone charging down the mountains. The gardens started out in the Renchi area of the park (“renchi” means “lotus pond”) and at the end of the seventeenth century the chief retainers were booted out, and the land taken over by the Maedas for their personal amusement. In 1822, a palace was built here for the 12th Lord Maeda to retire to, and its garden was named by Matsudaira Sadanobu (who may never have actually seen it, and it certainly didn’t look like it does now) as “Kenrokuen.” This name was derived from the “Chronicles of the Famous Luoyang Gardens”, a book by the Sung-dynasty Chinese poet Li Gefei, and stands for the six mutually-contradictory attributes of a perfect landscape: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, waterways, and panoramas. While Kenrokuen does have those, the name is probably more a reference to its perceived degree of perfection than a simple listing. With the fall of the ancien régime, Kenrokuen was opened to the plebs in 1871, and was swiftly—in two years, in fact—listed as a nationally-renowned garden. Kenrokuen’s status as the centrepiece of Kanazawa tourism has been steady every since.
There are a number of interesting stories connected with Kenrokuen. One, recounted in “Post War 50 Years in Ishikawa,” (p.367) tells of how, in October 1945, when the American occupying forces were in Kanazawa, a certain Lieutenant Colonel Haycock was visiting the garden when he noticed the statue of Yamato Takeru, standing tall with a sword in his hand. This being the time immediately after the war when Japan was being methodically expunged of anything that reeked of militarism and martial valour, Haycock looked at this statue and demanded that it be removed immediately, since it was clearly an armed soldier. Oh no, he was reassured by his hosts, this was a young maiden dancing the Sword Dance, and in fact was a symbol of peace. And thus one of the oldest outdoor bronze statues in Japan remains standing to this day. And incidentally, that Lieutenant Colonel was right: in the foundation myths of Japan, Yamato Takeru-no-Mikoto (whose very name literally means “Honour” “Fight” “Japan”) was an prince of Japan in the 4th century who fought many wars to expand the empire in Japan, and the statue itself was erected to honour the dead in the South-West War (the Saigo Rebellion) where the last real resistance against imperial rule was crushed (the statue, needless to say, honours the victors: it would be a few more years yet before Saigo’s reputation was redeemed enough to get him his own statue).
One little-known fact about Kenrokuen is that it used to be where the first foreign teachers in Kanazawa were housed. At the foot of the Yamazaki-yama mound, a two-storied house was built for the German teacher of mining, Von Dekken. Kenrokuen, in fact, while it gives the appearance of a timeless classical garden, was treated more as a public square in the early Meiji period, with all manner of public buildings being built. It housed the city’s first museum (and the first permanent museum in the country), a number of schools, the city library, and a children’s playground that was still there when I started living in Kanazawa. So the park—and indeed, much of central Kanazawa—has been slowly taken over by the tourist trade and removed from the daily living sphere of the citizens.
Kanazawa Castle
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Facing Kenrokuen, the next picture shows the snow-covered walls of the castle. To the left is the road that runs along the front of the park, while the moat was filled in around 1910 and is now filled with cars. Ishikawa Gate can be seen to the right, and the high area with trees was the main bailey. Most of the buildings of the castle were lost to fire in 1888, but even before then Kanazawa Castle was never one of the more impressive examples in Japan. It occupied a relatively small site, lost its keep in 1599 or so, and its main gate mid-way through the Edo period. But the Maedas didn’t really need an impressive castle: Japan was at peace, their rule was assured, and besides, no other lords were likely to pass through their city on their biennial trip to Edo, so there was no one to impress.
There are a number of legends about the white roofs of the castle, which are made from lead (think sheets of lead beaten over wooden forms, not solid lead tiles). The most common one is that this was done this way so that the lead could be melted and used to make bullets in case of a war. There is no actual historical evidence for this, however. Lightness (tiles are heavy, especially the older style of two-piece tile, and heavier still covered in lots of snow) and aesthetics, plus a nice surplus of lead when the central government took over all money printing are the more realistic reasons.
At the time this picture was made, the castle site was home to the Ninth Division of the Imperial Army, and you can just make out the guard’s sentry-box to the left of the gate. After the war, the national university moved in, and in fact for 18 months after I arrived I used this gate to go to classes before the campus finally moved. It is now a rather sterile park, though with some interesting reconstructions of some of the original buildings. I hope to get into the castle in more detail in later posts. The photo, rather unfortunately badly backlit, but with some nice lens effects, is not taken from quite the same location as, thanks to trees, signboards, and artistic licence, it is not in fact possible to see the view in the original print.
Oyama Shrine
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The next picture, in geographical order as we head north, is the main gate of Oyama Shrine. This gate is quite unique in Japan, looking like nothing else in the country. The shrine is dedicated to the founder of the Maeda clan, Lord Maeda Toshiie (Japanese names are given surname first, just like Chinese ones), and was founded a few years after the end of the Maeda’s rule over Kanazawa to give the people a focus for civic pride and hope as their world was rebuilt around them.
The gate was built in 1875, and is remarkable for including stained glass windows, at the topmost level, and also a lightning rod, clearly shown in this picture. It represents, thus, both the forward direction of the new Japan, with its new windows, radical design, and use of science, and at the same time, as the gate to where the founder of the Maedas is enshrined, serves as a reassurance that the old ways will not be forgotten. While the front gate gets all the tourist attention at Oyama Shrine, the rear gate is well worth a look as well, as it is the only remaining part of the Maeda’s palace. The rest of the place burned down—well, it burned down several times over its history.
I coloured the horo red in this photo to give a better idea.
Inside the grounds is a recent statue of Maeda Toshiie, with what looks for all the world like a rather large pumpkin on his back. This is in fact a shield, known as a “horo” in Japanese, which protected a warrior’s rear from arrows, and was made of bamboo or whalebone and covered with cloth. In 1568, Toshiie was chosen as one of Lord Oda Nobunaga’s Red Shield Force, which, together with the Black Shield Force, was the chosen elite of Nobunaga’s Household Cavalry, and their duties were to relay the orders of the commander to the officers. So if this was a colour statue, then the horo would be red, and Toshiie would look even more like he was piggy-backing a pumpkin….
This is yet another one where artistic licence and the intervening years (in this case, the growth of trees rather than buildings) mean it is impossible to replicate the composition. In addition, the torii gateway in front of the shrine gate, which a photo from 1899 clearly shows as present, is missing—or rather, is behind the shrine—a scant two years earlier. While it is perfectly possible the torii was moved, the general level of accuracy of these prints leads me to suspect the artist just Got It Wrong.
Asano River
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Here we are crossing the Asano River. The caption reads “Looking from the Great Asano River Bridge towards Mt. Over-There,” “Mt. Over-There,” or “Mukaiyama,” being an alternative name for Utatsuyama. Utatsuyama is the hill to the north of Kanazawa, across the river from the city and the castle, and the name also refers to its location: in the U and Tatsu direction from the castle. “U” is the “rabbit” in the Chinese zodiac, and also means the East direction, whereas “Tatsu,” the dragon,” points East-South-East.
The pedestrians are on the old wooden Asano Bridge, which was replaced with a stone one about twenty years after this print was made. Since the Asano is not that prone to devastating floods, that bridge still remains today. There was a similar one over the Sai River, on the other side of the city, but that was washed away and eventually replaced a few years later with the steel one that now spans the river without actually touching it. While the modern Asano Bridge is stone and concrete, replicas of the old wooden bridge have been built a little way both upstream and downstream. This gives a good idea of what the original view was like. Note, too, the overhead wires lovingly included as a symbol of progress. Many old photos of Japan almost seem to go out of their way to show wires, which is quite at odds with our modern sensibilities.
Eastern Teahouse District
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The next print is called “Autumn View of the Eastern [Pleasure] Quarter.” Interestingly, but aptly for the subject, this is a night scene, with rakish young dandies in kimonos and top hats out on the town. The Eastern Pleasure Quarter, or the Eastern Teahouse District as it is now known, has changed in external appearance less than any other part of the city: it still looks essentially as it did in its heyday at the close of the Edo period. As a result, it is now one of the city’s premiere tourist areas, and despite the overly-prettied up look it now has, it is still worth a stroll (though I personally prefer the back streets, which have a far more lived-in feel, for the simple reason that they are far more lived in).
Comparing the drawing from around 1900 with the photo taken over a century later, it is clear that little has changed. The row of trees down the middle—since this is autumn, they are probably maples—certainly is no longer there, and the “gas” lamps are modern replicas, but the houses still remain. The steepness of the roofs, by the way, is artistic licence: at no stage were they ever that steep. I am going to get into the Higashiyama area in a later post, so this is just a quick introduction.
Daijoji Temple
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Finally, we have the Red Gate of Daijoji temple. While off the main tourist trail of modern Kanazawa, due to its relatively remote location at the foot of the Nodayama hill, this was quite an important temple in Kanazawa, and is still a wonderfully still and green area with moss carpeting the ground. I recommend a visit for this, if no other reason. And in a bonus to impecunious travellers who may be feeling the yen’s pinch, it’s free.
The Daijoji was in the Honda-machi area of Kanazawa, near Kenrokuen, for the first hundred years of the Edo period before being moved out to the foot of Nodayama, where the Maedas had their family graveyard. Nodayama is also home to the largest cemetery in the city, sprawling up the hillside.
It is one place where it is relatively easy to experience zazen, the mystical Buddhist meditation rite that involves sitting very uncomfortably and staring at a wall while being whacked across the shoulders. It is also possible to stay there a few nights, living the life of a zen monk.
The view shown in the print here is somewhat imaginative, as the roof of the gate is shingle rather than tile, as is the main gate which can be seen to the bottom left but which in reality could never be seen like this. The perspective is completely screwed up as well. You tend to notice these things when trying to replicate compositions.
Incidentally, it’s interesting to note what is NOT shown in this series of prints. The Nagamachi area, one of modern Kanazawa’s most famous tourist spots, is not shown. This is because back in 1897, what Nagamachi has to offer was not remotely rare in Kanazawa. However I shall deal with Nagamachi and the problems of the “Samurai District,” in an upcoming post.
In the next post, I shall take a look at some old maps of the city, which are still quite good guides to the city layout even today….
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