Kanazawa, the golden marsh

So of course I’ve fallen behind on posting my doings, but I’ve been writing here and there whenever I get the chance. Of course as I’ve mentioned before I write what comes to mind whenever I get a chance, which does not necessarily form a logical narrative. Thus, I’ve ended up writing a bit on Kanazawa, where I traveled just this long weekend, before getting to the other events that form the time since I last wrote on anything substantial. The order I’ve visited the cities in doesn’t particularly matter  at this point, them all being in hindsight by now, so I’ll go ahead and tell you a little bit about what I’ve done the last few days. Further unfortunately, however, I haven’t had time to write much about what I’ve actually done in Kanazawa; rather I recorded some of my observations on what the city is like first. So I’ll break up the posts, and give you a taste of Kanazawa, with a specific description of its offerings to come. I will probably divide posts up like this more in the future as well, unless I’m magically granted chunks of time.

In either case, Kanazawa is a confused city. I’ll take my hotel room as an example. My hotel room had a double bed, view of the city, and was located in the center of town, next to an Emporio Armani and across the street from Gucci and Tiffany’s, yet it only costed$50/night. It is a city that really doesn’t know what it is or what it will become. It is in an transition state going from being a typical small Japanese city with some unusual famed locales that draw limited domestic visitors to becoming a tourist target and standard stopover for domestic and international peoples alike. The root cause of this I’m unsure of, but even outside, although largely heightened by, this complication, Kanazawa is a curious place.

View Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture in a larger map

Kanazawa is very much a small city; it is not a town, but it is the size of one. It’s kind of in the same class of cities as Providence, RI; Brighton, UK; and Ottawa, Canada. A good example of this nature is in the nightlife; it has a city nightlife, with around 150-200 bars, clubs, and other, more uniquely Japanese, entertainment venues, but it is small (200 venues is by the way quite few for a Japanese city, even Kyoto has thousands) and when you go out you are greeted by relatively sparse, if raucous, revelers. So Kanazawa is, at its core, a small provincial city. The strangeness comes, however, from the disturbance of this identity. Historically, Kanazawa has been in an isolated, rural environment due to the surrounding alps; via its gold production, however (the city and nearby locales produce 98% of Japan’s gold leaf to this day, although the gold itself can be imported now) as well as fertile land, the city and its retainers, the Maeda clan, became affluent. This resulted in a heavy patronage of arts, culture, and public works. Nevertheless, the remoteness of the city prevented great population growth or political meaningfulness. The end result is the modern Kanazawa, which despite its small size has a lot to see in many many parks, museums, historical districts, and to a far lesser extent temples. This results in a huge influx of tourism which has brought both wealth and affluent shopping venues like the aformentioned, turning the small city center into ten square blocks of Osaka, which only a few steps away transforms into low-density urban/suburban residential neighborhoods, or to the east the large parks. In about an hour you could walk between the two most distant sites in the city, the Teramachi district and the Higashiyama district.

OK, so we’ve got culture, sites, museums, low population, affluence, loads of domestic and foreign tourists (more foreigners even than I’d seen in Kyoto), shopping, and a provincial atmosphere. Putting that all together I think one can see the incongruities.

Still, Kanazawa was a nice little city with plenty to see in a leisurely two days with plenty of variety. Plus there’s shopping for those so inclined, although living in Osaka and eventually Tokyo I felt my time was better spent elsewhere. My experiences at specific sites to come.

(All pics from Kanazawa, not yet updated)

Downtown Kanazawa

downtown Kanazawa

River framing the southern border of the city