Kanazawa Castle

Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan, Japan

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Kanazawa Castle is a large, partially restored Japanese castle in the city of Kanazawa on the Pacific coast of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, originally built in 1583 by Maeda Toshiie and later expanded by his son Toshinaga to serve as the seat of the Maeda clan, who ruled the Kaga Domain for over 280 years.

The castle sits on the highest ground between the Sai and Asano rivers and is surrounded by a system of moats and canals, with a distinctive variety of stone walls that is considered the most diverse in Japan. Over its history, Kanazawa Castle was destroyed by fire many times, so most of the current wooden buildings are reconstructions modeled on how the castle looked in the 1850s, while the historic Ishikawa Gate (rebuilt in 1788) and the Sanjikken Nagaya storehouse (rebuilt in 1858) are the main surviving original structures and are designated Important Cultural Properties.

In the Meiji period it became an army headquarters and later a campus of Kanazawa University until 1996; since then the site has been developed as Kanazawa Castle Park, a National Historic Site, lying directly adjacent to the famous Kenroku-en Garden, which was once the castle’s private outer garden. The park is open year-round with free entry to the grounds, and visitors can pay a small fee to see restored buildings such as the Hishi Yagura turret, Gojukken Nagaya storehouse, and Hashizume-mon Tsuzuki Yagura, which offer views over the moats, stone walls, and surrounding gardens.