Nomura Samurai Residence: A Michelin Two-Star Garden in Kanazawa's Nagamachi

A Michelin Two-Star Garden from the Veranda: Highlights of Nomura Samurai Residence

The Nagamachi Samurai District. With its earthen walls and stone-paved lanes, this is an area where you can stroll and enjoy a townscape that preserves the old days. Within it, the place where you can step inside and see the home of a Kaga-clan samurai is Nomura Samurai Residence.

A green garden spreading just beyond the veranda. Furnishings that still hold the warmth of wood. A quiet moment that recalls the days of the Kaga domain’s million-koku wealth.

Inside the residence where a samurai of the Kaga clan once lived, you can take in the living spaces from the same vantage point as the warriors of the time.

This article introduces the highlights of Nomura Samurai Residence.

Nomura Samurai Residence

Nomura Samurai Residence is the former residence of the Nomura family, samurai of the Kaga clan, located in the Nagamachi district of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. It is a sightseeing spot where you can see up close both the buildings where the warriors lived and a garden acclaimed around the world.

A Michelin Two-Star Garden, Viewed from the Covered Veranda

The greatest highlight of the Nomura Residence is its garden. It was awarded two stars in the 2009 edition of the Michelin Green Guide Japon, and in the Japanese garden ranking by the American journal the Journal of Japanese Gardening, it rose to 3rd in the nation for 2003. It is a celebrated garden that has earned acclaim both in Japan and abroad.

The star of this garden is water. Water is drawn from the Onosho Canal (Ōnoshō yōsui), Kanazawa’s oldest waterway—used even in the construction of Kanazawa Castle—and brought in as a meandering stream (kyokusui) that winds through the garden and as a cascade falling over the stonework. With its never-ceasing sound of water, it is a design unique to the castle town of Kaga.

Around the water are set features such as a 400-year-old yamamomo (Japanese bayberry) and an old chinquapin (shii)—trees said to be hard to grow in the Hokuriku region—a large snow-viewing lantern (yukimi-dōrō), and a single bridge laid with Sakura-mikage granite.

And the Nomura garden is designed to be viewed from right up close, seated on the covered veranda (nure-en, a roofed engawa). The meandering stream reaches right up to your feet at the veranda’s edge, letting you feel the murmur of the water and the scenery of the garden close at hand.

The Upper Reception Room (Jōdan-no-ma)

The room of especially high formality within the residence is the upper reception room (jōdan-no-ma). It is a tatami room with the floor raised one level; the highest-ranking person sat on the elevated side, expressing the difference in rank between host and guest—a spatial expression of social rank in samurai architecture. In a samurai residence, it was the room for receiving a lord such as the domain’s daimyo.

The coffered ceiling (gō-tenjō) is made entirely of hinoki cypress, and the floor is laid with a single board of paulownia (kiri) measuring six shaku (about 1.8 m). In addition, fine detailing in rosewood (shitan) and ebony (kokutan), nail covers (kugikakushi) carved in openwork from black persimmon wood (kurogaki), and fusuma pulls carved from wenge (tagayasan)—decorations lavishly using fine woods are found throughout. The shōji doors facing the garden are fitted with early glass (giyaman); in the Kōka and Kaei eras (1844–1854), when glass was still precious, this was an eye-catching design.

Adorning the fusuma are landscape paintings (sansuiga) by Sasaki Senkei, a painter of the Kanō school in the service of the Kaga clan. The samurai reception room itself becomes a single work of art.

The Fubaku-an Tearoom

Up a flight of stone steps, on the second floor, is the Fubaku-an tearoom.

The tearoom is an elaborate sukiya-style space, and each of the materials used in it is a rarity. Set in the ceiling is a single board of ancient buried cedar (jindai-sugi) that lay long buried in the earth, held in place by midori-matsu pine, a specialty of Shikoku. The floorboard of the antechamber uses a single board of maple said to be about a thousand years old, and the ceiling is lined with the stems of makomo (wild rice plant).

Here you can enjoy matcha and dry sweets (higashi) for ¥500 (about $3.40 USD). Advance reservations are not accepted; you apply at the same-day reception. Serving times are 8:45 am–12:00 pm and 1:15 pm–4:00 pm (about 15 minutes). After making a round of the residence, take a moment for tea on the second floor. You can spend time as if you were a guest of a samurai household.

Swords and Old Documents That Tell a Samurai House’s Memory

The exhibition hall attached to the residence is the Onikawa Bunko.

Here, in addition to swords and arms and armor handed down for generations in the Nomura family, are displayed letters from the Maeda family and from Sengoku warlords such as Akechi Mitsuhide and Asakura Yoshikage. You can trace how the figures you see named in history textbooks were connected to the household of a Kaga-clan samurai.

The name Onikawa derives from another name for the Onosho Canal that flows in front of the residence. It originates in the Keichō era (1596–1615), when the magistrate who built the waterway called this stream the Onikawa, or Demon River; the name also overlaps with an anecdote that a person who later studied in this area named his own library the Onikawa Bunko.

A Residence Where You Step into a Kaga Samurai’s Home and Touch Their Aesthetic

The Nomura Residence is a home where a samurai of the Kaga clan actually lived. Sit on its veranda, and the same garden the warrior gazed upon spreads right before your eyes. You can step up into the residence and place yourself directly within the life of a Kaga-clan samurai. That is the Nomura Residence.

Beyond the garden, there is the formal reception room that welcomed daimyo, the second-floor tearoom, and the swords and letters handed down through the family for generations. Into this single household’s home, the wealth and aesthetic of the Kaga domain’s million-koku were poured without restraint.

A beautiful Japanese garden that continues to captivate people not only in Japan but around the world, and the samurai life that truly existed there. Do pay a visit to the Nomura Residence.

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