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Kanazawa Castle, Kanazawa, Japan

Kenroku-en Gardens & Kanazawa Castle, Kanazawa, Japan

 

Kenroku-en (兼六園, Six Attributes Garden), located in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan, is an old private garden associated with Kanazawa Castle. Along with Kairaku-en and Kōraku-en, Kenroku-en is one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan.

 

Kenroku-en was developed from the 1620s to the 1840s by the Maeda clan, the daimyōs who ruled the former Kaga Domain.

 

While the date of initial development of the garden that would be become known as Kenroku-en is rather unclear, one version of the garden's origins can perhaps be marked by the completion of the Tatsumi water channel in 1632 by Maeda Toshitsune, the third daimyō of the powerful Maeda clan and ruler of the Kaga Domain from 1605 to 1639, as this feature would be later incorporated into creating the garden's twisting waterways in 1822.

 

The garden is located outside the gates of Kanazawa Castle where it originally formed the outer garden, and covers 114,436.65 m² (over 25 acres). It began in 1676 when the 5th daimyō Maeda Tsunanori moved his administration to the castle and began to landscape a garden in this vicinity. This garden was, however, destroyed by fire in 1759.

 

The garden was named by Matsudaira Sadanobu at the request of Narinaga. Its name was derived from the "Chronicles of the Famous Luoyang Gardens" (洛陽名園記), a book by the Chinese poet Li Gefei (李格非), and stands for the six attributes of a perfect landscape: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, waterways, and panoramas.

 

Kanazawa

 

 

Kanazawa (金沢市 Kanazawa-shi) is a city located in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 January 2018, the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households. The total area of the city was 468.64 square kilometres (180.94 sq mi). It is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture.

 

Kanazawa is located in north-western Ishikawa Prefecture in the Hokuriku region of Japan and is bordered by the Sea of Japan to the west and Toyama Prefecture to the east. The city sits between the Sai and Asano rivers. The eastern portion of the city is dominated by the Japanese Alps. Parts of the city are within the borders of the Hakusan National Park. Kanazawa has a humid continental climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by hot and humid summers and cold winters with heavy snowfall. Average temperatures are slightly cooler than those of Tokyo, with means approximately 4 °C (39 °F) in January, 12 °C (54 °F) in April, 27 °C (81 °F) in August, 17 °C (63 °F) in October, and 7 °C (45 °F) in December. The minimum temperature on record was −9.4 °C (15.1 °F) on January 27, 1904, with a maximum of 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) standing as a record since September 8, 1902. The city is distinctly wet, with an average humidity of 73% and 193 rainy days in an average year. Precipitation is highest in the autumn and winter; it averages more than 250 millimetres (10 in)/ month November through January when the Aleutian Low is strongest, but it is above 125 millimetres (4.9 in) every month of the year.

 

The area around Kanazawa was part of ancient Kaga Province. The name "Kanazawa" (金沢, 金澤), which literally means "marsh of gold", is said to derive from the legend of the peasant Imohori Togoro (literally "Togoro Potato-digger"), who was digging for potatoes when flakes of gold washed up. The well in the grounds of Kenroku-en known as 'Kinjo Reitaku' (金城麗澤) to acknowledge these roots. The area where Kanazawa is was originally known as Ishiura, whose name is preserved at the Ishiura Shrine near the Kenrokuen Gardens.

 

During the Muromachi period, as the powers of the central shōguns in Kyoto was waning, Kaga Province came under the control of the Ikkō-ikki, followers of the teachings of priest Rennyo, of the Jōdo Shinshū sect, who displaced the official governors of the province, the Togashi clan, and established a kind of theocratic republic later known as "The Peasants' Kingdom". Their principal stronghold was the Kanazawa Gobo, on the tip of the Kodatsuno Ridge. Backed by high hills and flanked on two sides by rivers, it was a natural fortress, around which a castle town developed. This was the start of what would become the city of Kanazawa.

 

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Uploaded on January 26, 2024
Taken on October 23, 2023