Kanazawa Castle

Kanazawa Castle was 'built' in 1510 during the period of the of the Peasant's Republic. The security that the castle afforded eventually led to the establishment of the city of Kanazawa. In 1580, a feudal lord called Oda Nobunga, who was attempting to unify Japan, sent an army to conquer the castle town under a general called Sakuma Morimasa. His success was rewarded by Morimasa by awarding him Kanazawa as his fiefdom.

Shortly afterwards, Nobunga was assassinated in a conspiracy that included Morimasa. So much for loyalty! Morimasa was defeated in battle by the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, led by Maeda Toshie in 1583. Maeda Toshie was in turn rewarded with the castle and the surrounding province of Kaga. Over time more proviinces came under his control. Fortunately, this was a more enlightened decision as during the Maeda period, as it was later called, an era of prosperity and the expansion of Kanazawa town ensued.

In 1592, Maeda ordered the rebuilding of the castle. Subsequently, over the centuries, parts of castle were burned down and rebuilt many times. The last time being in 1881. Subsequently, most of what we see today are only parts that existed in 1881 that have been rebuilt. What exists today is therefore not very old.

In the West, when one thinks of a castle, one imagines tall structures, bulit of huge stones, usually on a hill and impregnable to any attack from except the heaviest cannons. Kanazawa Castle is built on a hill and that is where the similarity ends because it is not particularly tall, it is made mostly of timber and it hardly looks like it could repel most any kind of sophistcated attack. The roof is made of lead, apparently so that in case of a siege, it could be removed and made into musket balls...However, the lead roof does give the castle a magical visual quality like a light dusting of snow.

As it stands, when approaching the castle, which is surrounded by beautifully tendered lawns, it looks like a bunch disparate buildings, one of which is a long hall, while the rest are out houses. The only indication of what the castle looked is in the model in the main building, which shows a far more complex and complete fortification, with outer walls and a moat (similar to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo), but also indicates a less sophisicated type of warfare compared to what was the case in Europe during the same period.