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KAKUNODATE |
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While Akita City has lost nearly all its historical relics, nearby
KAKUNODATE still has the air of a feudal town, with its strictly
delineated samurai and merchants' quarters. It's an atmospheric place,
and although you can visit on a day-trip from either Akita or Morioka,
it merits an overnight stay.
In 1620 the lords of Akita established a military outpost at Kakunodate
consisting of a castle, on a hill to the north, a samurai town of around
eighty residences, and 350 merchants' homes in a cramped district to the
south. This basic layout and a handful of the samurai houses have
survived the years, as have several hundred of the weeping cherry trees
brought from Kyoto three centuries ago.
Pick up a town map from the tourist information centre before setting
off for the samurai quarter, roughly fifteen minutes' walk northwest.
You can't miss the division between the packed streets of the commercial
town - now mostly modern and rather run-down - and the wide avenues
where the samurai lived in their spacious mansions among neatly fenced
gardens. The most interesting of the samurai houses is the Aoyagi-ke
(daily: April-Nov 9am-5pm, Jan-March & Dec 9am-4pm; ¥500), a large,
thatched house towards the north end of the samurai street, which is
easily identified by an unusually grand entrance gate. Aoyagi-ke was
lived in up to 1985, but now contains an odd mix of museums, including
samurai armour, agricultural implements, memorabilia from the
Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars, and a wonderful display of antique
gramophones and cameras.
A little further up the street, the impressive Ishiguro-ke (daily
9am-5pm; ¥300, or ¥720 with the Art Museum and Denshokan) is one of the
oldest of Kakunodate's samurai houses. It was built in 1809 for the
daimys 's financial adviser and its main features are two large kura ,
fireproof warehouses used for storing rice, miso and other valuables.
Despite its extraordinary green concrete exterior, the Hirafuku Memorial
Art Museum (April-Nov daily 9am-5pm; Jan-March & Dec closed Mon; ¥300),
at the top end of the street, houses a small but decent collection of
traditional Japanese art. Heading south again, the Denshokan (daily
9am-4.30/5pm; ¥300) occupies a more attractive red-brick building. This
museum of Satake-clan treasures also doubles as a training school for
kaba-zaiku , the local craft in which boxes, tables and tea caddies are
coated with a thin veneer of cherry bark. Developed in the late
eighteenth century to supplement the income of impoverished samurai ,
kaba-zaiku is now Kakunodate's trademark souvenir. If you prefer your
bark still on the trees, turn right outside the Denshokan, where there's
a two-kilometre tunnel of cherries along the Hinokinai-gawa embankment.
If you've got some spare time during your stay at Kakunodate, visit
Suzuki Shuzoten (tel 0187/56-2121, fax 56-2124, info@hideyoshi.co.jp ),
a sake brewery that's been in operation for more than 300 years. The
brewery is famous for its award-winning Hideyoshi brand, which prides
itself on using crystal-clear water from the neighbouring mountains.
Call ahead to set up a tour (in Japanese, but the staff say they'll do
their best with foreign guests) which includes samplings of their
concoctions, a small one-room museum of random Japanese and Chinese
artefacts and a view of the stunning garden. To get out here, take the
JR train a few stops on the Tazawako line towards Omagi, to Ugo Nagano
station; the brewery is only a three-minute walk west of the station, or
a fifteen-minute drive from Kakunodate on Routes 46 and 105. For a
detailed map and directions, pick up a brochure at the information
centre in Kakunodate station.
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