Nishi Chaya District

This guide to the Nishi Chaya District in Kanazawa follows Shimada Seijiro, a teahouse keeper's son who peered through the same wooden lattice you'll see, and grew up to become one of Japan's best-selling novelists by the 1920s. You'll hear why Maeda Narinaga, the twelfth lord of the Kaga domain, ordered the city's teahouses corralled into three separate quarters in 1820, and why Nishi Chaya was built quieter and more closed than its sister district. Because Kanazawa escaped wartime bombing, the lattice fronts and narrow lanes around you are original, not reconstructions. Look closely at the wooden screens and imagine a boy's face pressed against them.