Kanazawa Shrine

This guide to Kanazawa Shrine explores the legend behind the city's own name: a farmer named Togoro who is said to have rinsed wild potatoes in this spring some twelve hundred years ago and watched flecks of gold rise in the water. It follows the Maeda lords who ruled Kanazawa for over two centuries, and eleventh lord Harunaga Maeda, who built this shrine beside the spring in 1794 and dedicated it to the scholar-god Sugawara no Michizane. Look through the eight small red gates toward the still-walled pool the legend points to, watched over by a carved dragon on the roof above.