Kuboichiototsurugigu

This guide to Kuboichiototsurugigu in Kanazawa starts with the writer Izumi Kyoka, born in 1873 across the street, to the sound of quiet footsteps climbing the slope behind the shrine after dark. That slope, Kuragari-zaka, the Dark Slope, stayed dim by design, letting merchants who had grown rich at Kanazawa's oldest marketplace slip unseen toward the Kazuemachi teahouses. Founded over a thousand years ago around a shrine to the god Susanoo, the market and the slope above it shaped the childhood of a boy who watched those comings and goings from a house just steps away.