Kanazawa is a castle town. Most of Japan’s major cities – and a number of its minor ones – have developed from castle towns. So what exactly is a castle town? As the name implies, it is a town with a castle (or at least a site where there once was a castle). But a Japanese castle town, or “jouka-machi” (literally, town under a castle) implies much more than that bland description. The castle town, which reached its zenith during the Edo Period (1603-1867), was the centre of government for feudal Japanese domains under their lords, the daimyo. Or, in the case of Edo (renamed Tokyo, or Eastern Capital, after it became the Emperor’s residence), the centre of government for the entire country under the shoguns.
Trying to find a place to start introducing the history and culture of Kanazawa is not easy. Where to begin? The founding of the city? The traditional centre of the city, the castle? Kenrokuen Gardens, the centre of the tourist circuit, perhaps? I think perhaps a good place to start, if we are going to let the voices of the past be our guide, is with the streets. In particular, with maps of the city.
Maps are some of the most powerful historical documents created, because they show where things are, how they are laid out, and how to get to them. They are in a sense the ultimate panopticon of power, with the gaze unfettered and free to roam. Which is precisely why they were so controlled and censored by the feudal government in Japan. Maps of Kanazawa were created largely for two people: the local lord, or the shogun, and never for the common folk. This affected what they showed, and in how much detail. Most extant maps of the castle town from the Edo period are conspicuously missing the castle itself: for military reasons, the defences – the walls and towers and gates – are left blank. However they are often wonderfully detailed when we look at the streets and neighbourhoods.
The second thing to notice about maps of cities in the Edo period (aside from how big they were: some maps are several metres on a side) is that while some areas, a majority, are shown as divided up into housing, other areas are just left blank. But in this case it is not military censorship at fault: these blank areas are where the townsfolk, the commoners, lived, and the areas where the samurai lived.
Kanazawa is one of the easiest cities in Japan to navigate using period maps. One major reason for this is that it avoided being plastered by American bombs during World War 2, while its neighbours of Fukui and Toyama were both hit. This is the reason most commonly given for the survival of the old road layout, but it is somewhat disingenuous in that even though peoples houses got destroyed, their property rights remained, and so rebuilding did have to take that into account. In other words, even with cities like Osaka and Tokyo, it is still easy to trace the old roads. With Kanazawa, however, another factor comes into play: unlike Tokyo and Osaka, rather than having grown steadily over the past century and a half since the Edo period ended and the Emperor Meiji came to the throne, it has in fact gradually but steadily declined in rank. And there is nothing like decline to preserve urban spaces.
So, with map in hand (not an original, preferably), we are free to wander the roads, much as people did in the Edo period only with somewhat more traffic.
The best maps are from the later Edo period. Earlier ones are rather less accurate. This one, showing the castle and the area around it shortly after the start of the Edo period, is not the best guide to modern Kanazawa. However we can see that areas that are now the lower baileys of the castle were once residential, with the castle confined to the higher areas.
But if we take a later map, from the last century of the Edo Period, the castle area looks a lot more like its present form, and we can use it as a guide to stroll around the area.
Since the castle is off-limits, at least on the map, the first place to start is the wide road leading out from the front gate to Owaricho. The roads around this area are much as they were in feudal times, though the main road was widened before the war to accommodate the tram. Photos from a hundred years ago give a good impression of what it was like in its heyday. This was the commercial centre of the city, where the richest and highest ranked merchants, those with the Kaga Domain equivalent of the Royal Warrant, lived. These “mombatsu tokken shounin” supplied the highest ranks of Kanazawa society with their daily needs. Some of these families grew rather wealthy indeed—when the Emperor Meiji visited Kanazawa, he did not stay at the former residence of one of the elite samurai, but in a merchant home (albeit one with a new wing constructed specially for him). The highest ranks of all were the “iegara chōnin,” the Household Townsmen, who were permitted retainers and estates, along with the waiving of their normal taxes and the right to be in the presence of the lord (a right many of the lower samurai did not have). These elite families, only 15 in 1860, were those who had come over with Maeda Toshiie and served as town elders (machi toshiyori) and as “ginza-yaku,” minting coins and controlling weights and measures[1].
Modern Owaricho is no longer the commercial centre of Kanazawa—that role was taken over by the Korinbo and Katamachi areas starting from around the 1920s, when the proximity of the Fourth Upper High School, the Town Hall, and the Prefectural Office drove the rise in café culture centring on the area where the distinctive 109 building stands. For this reason, it still retains many shop-houses in the traditional style, especially along the back street towards the river.
Owaricho in 1914. Note the stones used on the roofs rather than tiles.
Click on any image to see a larger version.
The Temple Areas
There are three main temple areas in Kanazawa, the largest of which is the aptly named Teramachi, or Temple Town, lying near the southern entrance to the city, across the river from the castle. Long walls line much of the main street, and temples are also dotted around the side streets, making this a very pleasant place for a stroll.
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Kinpu Daiezu, circa 1848
Looking at old maps of the area, some dating from the middle of the 17th century, the area has a long line of temples marching along the road that leads to the hill of Nodayama, as well as clustered around the road out to the town of Tsurugi (the road heading past the red-shaded Gyokusenji on this map). The majority of those temples are still there, though even a quick glance will show that for the most part they are greatly reduced in size. We can actually trace this decline in site size by looking at a series of maps and illustrations of the area. In the 17th century, aside from a few scattered residences next to the Saihoji and the Myoryuji (the suffix “ji” designates a temple in Japanese, as does “tera” or “dera”: hence, referring to Kyoto’s famous Honganji Temple literally means the “Original Vow Temple Temple”). While this area was largely temples and townsmen, a 1668 map shows some areas that are marked on the 1667 one as townsmen areas as “ashigaru,” or foot soldier (the lowest rank of samurai). On the 1668 map, for example, we find the notation, “Eleven or twelve foot soldier [households], one of which is the headman”.
A few years later, we find more samurai areas mingled in with the townsmen areas. This, incidentally, flies in the face of the standard Edo period urban planning concept, which was to rigidly separate them. However, like many concepts, this was far from absolute (a good way to get an idea of this sort of thing is to look at the many times the Shogunate passed conspicuous consumption laws – this is not (just) the Shogunate being draconian and Puritan, but reflects the wide extent to which these laws were flouted, since they had to keep repeating themselves).
A century later, in the mid 18th century, we see a number of townsmen houses (shown in grey on this map from around 1854) along the north side of the large Gyokusenji (outlined in red below). The area of townhouses around the temple, incidentally, was called “Gyokusenji Monzen.” This refers to the “monzen-machi,” literally the “town in front of the [temple] gates.” These residential areas were different from the standard townsmen areas in that they were administered by the Temples and Shrines Magistrate (jishabugyou), rather than the Town Magistrate (machibugyou).
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Kanazawa Souezu, circa 1854
The Gyokusenji, incidentally, was one of the largest temples in Kanazawa. It was founded to pay honour to the spirit of the Lady Ei, known as Gyokusen (literally, Jade Fountain) later in life, and as such had a direct connection to the Maeda lords who ruled the city. Ei was the wife of the second Lord Maeda, Toshinaga, and the daughter of Oda Nobunaga. The wife of the third lord, Toshitsune, was the daughter of the Shogun and the granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and her temple, Tentokuin, was in terms of sheer area the biggest in the entire city. These political marriages give some idea of the importance of the Maedas, However Gyokusenji is now a shadow of its former glory, and what remains of its rather shabby grounds are little more than a hunting ground for stray cats. Interestingly, however, the current temple site is not quite the original, though the location is the same. In the Edo period, the boundaries between Buddhism and Shinto were blurred, and the Izumino Sugawara Shrine was attached to the Gyokusenji. However in the Meiji Period, following the abolition of the old feudal system and the return to (more or less) direct monarchical rule, Buddhism and Shinto were split apart as part of the efforts to re-establish Shinto as the premier religion of the land—largely as it was what gave the Emperor his right to rule, as descended from the Sun Goddess. So the shrine was sent packing. However a fire at the temple only a few years later forced the Gyokusenji to use the old shrine building for its main hall. And when in 1872 the shrine was allowed to return, it was built on the old temple hall site. So, in essence, the temple and the shrine that we can see today have literally swapped places.
By the early 19th century, townsmen residential areas have sprung up in front of most temples. This points to a gradual decline in the fortunes of the temples in line with the gradual collapse of the feudal system, which was struggling to survive and prosper as forms of proto-capitalism were developing, and samurai found themselves, in many cases, in debt to the merchants. While the sale of land was forbidden, these maps show that nevertheless, the old rigid boundaries were already giving way long before Perry came on the scene and acted as the catalyst to sweep the system aside. So the temple areas we see today, while still impressive, were once far more impressive, with long high walls lining the road, broken only by their gates.
Reference
[1] Kanazawa City History, Tsushi-hen, Vol 2 Kinsei, p. 395.
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