Kanazawa Streets

Probably the most striking part of Kanazawa Station is its massive wooden gate. People exiting the station are always impressed when they first see this large vermilion structure, and it looks even more impressive when viewed from the other side, opposite the station, with the huge glass dome of the plaza roof rising behind it. There is usually a small crowd of tourists and travelers gathered just in front of the gate taking memorial pictures. You could say that this gate has become a symbol of Kanazawa itself.

What is interesting about this gate is that it is built in the form of a traditional torii gate, and these gates usually stand at the entrance to a Japanese shrine. They are meant to mark the moment when you move between your ordinary day-to-day life and transition into a sacred space. Obviously putting a big red torii gate between the station and the city is very symbolic, but what exactly does it mean? Or when we move through the gate into Kanazawa are we entering a sacred city? This city does, after all, have many, many temples, and historically the city was actually born from a revolutionary religious idea.

Back in the 15th century, a new branch of Buddhism became very popular in this region because it taught a sacred truth: that all people are equal. This teaching of equality inspired the local people to rise up and throw out their lords. They set up their own independent “Peasants’ Kingdom” which they ruled from a fortified temple on elevated ground. The temple was called Oyama Gobo and the city of Kanazawa grew up around it. After a century, this Buddhist kingdom fell and the temple was replaced by Kanazawa Castle, but Buddhist ideas and philosophy remained very important here. So perhaps the torii gate at the front of Kanazawa Station is partly a tribute to that religious origin.

Very often in Japanese shrines, there is not just one gate, but a series of gates, and actually this is true of Kanazawa Station too. In the station building’s central concourse you can see that the roof is supported by a series of wooden pillars joined at the top by wooden beams. Built from local cypress wood there are 12 of these gates with 24 pillars. Take a closer look at them and you will see embedded in each one a beautiful piece of art. These artworks represent Kanazawa’s heritage crafts of lacquerware, woodwork, and ceramics.

These crafts date from a long period of high artistic and cultural development in Kanazawa. In 1583, after the fall of the Peasants Kingdom, a general named Maeda Toshiie, was given control over the region. His family ruled from Kanazawa Castle for almost three centuries. During that time they invited many talented craftsmen and artists to work in Kanazawa and the city was transformed into a center of culture famed for its gold and silver leaf craftwork, lacquerware, ceramics, and silk. Noh theater and the geisha arts also flourished here at this time. You can see Noh represented in the torii gate at the front of the station. The two vertical pillars are shaped to resemble tsuzumi, a type of drum used in Noh theater, and that is why the gate is called the “Tsuzumi-mon” or “Tsuzumi Gate”.