Kuragarizaka

This guide to Kuragarizaka in Kanazawa follows a narrow, permanently shaded stone stairway that merchants once used to slip unseen from their shop town down to the geisha houses of Kazuemachi. It traces the childhood of novelist and kabuki playwright Izumi Kyoka, born in 1873 a few lanes away, who crossed these steps to school every day between the flat daylight of the merchant streets and the lantern hush of the teahouse district beyond. You'll pass a single cherry tree at the bottom, named for one of his own stories about performers blurring the line between stage and street.