Shiinoki Cultural Complex

This guide to the Shiinoki Cultural Complex in Kanazawa opens with a strange fact: architect Kenkichi Yabashi, who trained under the designer of Tokyo Station and spent his career chasing a parliament building worthy of a modern Japan, died in 1927, nine years before that Diet Building finally opened, having built only one project he lived to see finished, right here. It follows that 1924 reinforced-concrete government office through decades of use, and its near-demolition once the prefecture moved out and the nameplate came down. Look up at the two chinquapin trees shading the entrance, older than the building itself and the reason it carries their name.