Kanazawa, the Japanese City Time Almost Forgot

New bullet-train service from Tokyo makes this city—a place of castles, gardens and geishas—a tempting side trip

By Chaney Kwak in the Wall Street Journal

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED as I stepped off the train in Kanazawa was the hypermodernity of its railway station, which is covered by a glittering glass dome. The second thing I noticed was the utter absence of foreign visitors. This was a contrast from the few days I had just spent in Kyoto, which is one of my favorite Japanese cities but this time seemed to be overrun with Western tourists in rented kimonos mugging for the smartphones on the ends of their selfie-sticks.
Kanazawa, for the moment, anyway, is a refreshingly low-key affair. This 16th-century castle town of some 460,000 on Japan’s west coast has remained blissfully off the radar of most overseas travelers but has long been a favorite getaway for the Japanese, explaining why tickets for this month’s inaugural Shinkansen high-speed train service—which has cut travel time from Tokyo down to just two and a half hours from almost four—sold out in seconds.
Designated a Unesco City of Crafts and Folk Art, Kanazawa has serious artistic credibility and is a center for artisans who produce lacquer ware, textiles and other crafts using traditional techniques. None of these is more identified with Kanazawa than gold leaf. True to the city’s name, which means golden marsh, Kanazawa produces virtually all the gold leaf made in Japan, where they like to cover everything from monuments to food with the stuff.
At Hakuza Honten, a local store that specializes in all things gilded, I watched customers shop for varnished jewelry cases and bowls that cost many thousands of dollars, along with more affordable gold-flecked poundcakes that Japanese travelers snap up by the armful as omiyage, or souvenirs that they traditionally bring home for friends and co-workers. These shiny goodies glittered plenty, but what really caught my eye was the replica of a 16th-century shogun’s traveling tearoom that was covered in so much gold leaf it literally glowed behind its protective glass wall.
Even more captivating than the gold-covered finery was one of the store’s craftsmen, 66-year-old Shigeyo Aoshima, whom I watched hammer sheets of gold pressed between parchment into gold leaf. He pounded and deftly manipulated the sheets with wooden tweezers until the precious metal was transformed over the course of an hour into luminous veils that fluttered as he worked with them. When he was finished, the gold leaf was a thousand times thinner than an average piece of paper and dissolved to glitter when rubbed between his fingers: a perfect metaphor for the elusive nature of luxury. When I asked Mr. Aoshima how long he had practiced to become a master craftsman his reply was quintessentially Japanese: “You never stop training,” he said.
Having been spared by earthquakes and tsunamis and having escaped the World War II air raids that decimated so many Japanese cities, Kanazawa is a living museum of sorts, and one of the best-preserved cities in the nation. With its clay-walled, shingle-roofed homes and sinewy trees, the Nagamachi quarter looks just as it must have when samurai warriors lived here from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Some of the gates of the restored feudal mansions were left open by their owners, allowing me to sneak a peek into their mossy gardens with carp ponds.
The neighborhood was so sleepy that I began to wonder if I had wandered into a sort of Japanese Colonial Williamsburg after closing time. The stone-paved lanes were eerily silent except for an occasional gurgling sound from one of the canals, which were once used to transport goods but are so pristine it is hard to believe they were ever anything but decorative. I was brought back to the present when a woman appeared, seemingly out of thin air, and slid open a large wooden door that revealed a parking lot and a half dozen cars. After steering her electric vehicle into the narrow alleyway, she closed the gate, once again hiding any trace of the 21st century.
Higashi Chaya, another historic area on the other side of the city, looks like a sound stage for a 19th-century costume drama: There’s not a single visible power line to distract visitors from its vintage ambience. The quarter is packed with machiya, the narrow, two-story wooden shops where merchants lived, worked and stored their products until the 1950s. The distinctive patterns of their timber lattices indicated what sort of goods were sold there, whether rice, silk or liquor. Today they sell mostly souvenirs, including facial masks speckled with the city’s gold leaf.
The biggest draw of Higashi Chaya are the geishas who work here. During the day, the kimono-clad ladies serve sweets and thick green tea in the courtyards of teahouses; at night, these classically trained performers put on elaborate kimonos, paint their faces white and entertain deep-pocketed patrons with drinking games and witty banter over elaborate meals. Though it may have the ring of a gentleman’s club, the whole affair is decidedly chaste. The discreet boîtes where the geishas work are open only to regular clients, although the Art of Travel, a local tour company, can arrange for foreign visitors—men and women—to experience an evening that includes a meal of sashimi and locally fermented sake accompanied by geishas performing the delicate buyô dance and playing the shamisen, a traditional three-stringed instrument.
Getting There: The Hokuriku Shinkansen high-speed train from Tokyo to Kanazawa takes 2.5 hours and costs about $120. Several major airlines offer nonstop service between U.S. gateways and Tokyo’s Narita Airport.
Staying There: Splurge for one of the five antique-filled rooms at the 140-year-old Asadaya Ryokan, which has pampering service and is known for its fresh and artfully prepared seafood (about $820 per night, including breakfast and dinner (asadaya.co.jp/ryokan).APA Hotel is a typical Japanese business hotel, with clean and comfortable no-frills accommodations, a convenient location just outside the train station and a price that’s hard to beat (from about $70, apahotel.com/en).
Eating There: For almost 300 years, Kanazawans have gone to the centrally located Omi-cho Market for fresh fish, produce and prepared food. Line up with the locals for crab legs, seafood bowls and sushi in the covered arcade, or try one of the market’s many good restaurants (Aokusa-machi 88).
Being There: The Art of Travel, an American-run and locally based tour company, arranges bespoke itineraries including visits to traditional craftsmen. Evenings with the geishas in Higashi Chaya range from about $700 to $3,000 (81-76-221-1586 theartoftravel.net).
The city’s symbolic and topographic crown is the 28-acre Kenrokuen garden, created and maintained for the enjoyment of the feudal lords who lived in the neighboring castle. Typical of Japanese gardens, Kenrokuen is intersected with winding lanes and streams that flow under arched footbridges. Gnarly pine trees camouflage classical pagodas, which provide meditative spots to rest beside the flower-lined ponds.
The park embodies wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that celebrates transiency and imperfection. While grand European gardens—like those at Versailles—seem to have been designed with immortality in mind, the creators of Japanese gardens such as Kenrokuen were reaching for an earthly manifestation of the ephemeral. In spring it blushes with canopies of pink cherry blossoms; in summer it’s awash in blood-red azaleas. In winter, to protect the tree limbs from breaking under heavy snows, gardeners tie lengths of rope to the branches and attach them to bamboo poles that run along the trunks, making the trees look like giant chandeliers. From season to season, the very shape of Kenrokuen changes.
Just down the hill from the timelessness of Kenrokuen is the unabashedly modern 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, a stark, circular structure built with boatloads of glass to reflect its surroundings rather than compete with them. Its galleries exhibit works by contemporary masters including Gerhard Richter and Do Ho Suh.
I knew Kanazawa was a city with one foot planted proudly in its past. What I realized at the museum is that its other foot is striding into the future almost as swiftly as the bullet trains now rolling into its station. But the best parts of Kanazawa have remained unchanged for centuries. I have little doubt they’ll be around for centuries more.