Visiting Kanazawa Castle - Kanazawa, Japan

January 2025

Visiting Kanazawa Castle – Kanazawa, Japan

Kanazawa Castle is a national history site that sits atop a hill at the highest part of Kanazawa surrounded by beautiful park space and gardens. This castle dates back to the late 1500s with a few changes in tenants – ones early on who ruled over a much larger region than just Kanazawa – and multiple fires that through the years caused the castle to be rebuilt, and rebuilt, and rebuilt again (six fires of varying sizes total). In more recent years, it was used for various purposes like a base for the Japanese army and a campus for Kanazawa University but currently serves as a museum. The space is now restored to showcase the wooden structure that existed over 100 years ago.

The first area we stopped at was a modern building that featured a short video showing the castle with VR technology to showcase what the castle was like originally in the Edo era. It is definitely worth a visit before seeing the castle itself to give some history before seeing the castle itself.

Entrance to the castle is 320 yen and you can also purchase a two attraction ticket for 500 yen if you plan on visiting Kenroku-en Gardens next door. This makes for an easy combination for a half day in Kanazawa. After paying for our tickets, we were instructed to remove our shoes to explore the castle area. I only point this out specifically as during our winter visit, the floors were absolutely freezing! Make sure to wear thick socks.

The inside of the castle is simple but modern in a way that pays homage to the original design. There are many opportunities to appreciate the craftsmanship and woodworking. While most of the signs are in Japanese, there are a few videos and displays that showcase this which we really enjoyed. There was even one video that showed how all the wood pieces connected into each other, joining and locking together without the use of any nails – and they had a heated floor mat here which was greatly appreciated.