By INGRID K. WILLIAMS
Published: December 24, 2010
ON a sunny early November afternoon in the Japanese city of Kanazawa, the alchemy of autumn had already begun transforming the city’s beloved Kenrokuen Garden from an oasis of leafy greens into a gold-tinged sanctuary. Workers were busy constructing yukitsuri — thick ropes tied to fragile tree branches, intended to brace them against heavy snowfalls — in dramatic pyramids that soar over the gnarled wood. And the transformation continues as the seasons progress.
“It’s so beautiful, like a black-and-white calligraphy,” Masaki Yokokawa, the owner of Guest House Pongyi, a small hostel that opened in 2009, said of the garden in winter. And when the icy chill eventually gives way to springtime, the awakening branches will bloom with feathery pink and white cherry blossoms.
With distinct, captivating looks for each season, the garden is the year-round star attraction in Kanazawa, a history-rich city in the Ishikawa Prefecture on Japan’s western coast.
The garden is “a national treasure,” said Junko Morita, an English-speaking liaison who works at one of the city’s tourist offices. “All Japanese know about it.”
It is also part of the rich traditional side of the city, along with a feudal-era castle, well-preserved geisha districts and a dazzling “ninja” temple.
The historic sights now have contemporary company in the form of some decidedly modern attractions that have opened in the last few years. This fusion of the old and the new means that the city spans the centuries in just a few miles. And though, as Ms. Morita noted, Kanazawa has always been on the radar of the Japanese, an increasing number of foreigners are being pulled in by the city’s eye-opening range of temptations.
The tourism office where Ms. Morita works, the city’s second, opened last year as part of an extensive effort by the city to accommodate international visitors to Kanazawa. To that end, the city now boasts a comprehensive tourism Web site and straightforward, easy-to-navigate tourist bus routes. In May, a group called the Goodwill Guide Network began offering free English-language tours of the garden and the adjacent Kanazawa Castle.