This note follows the five earlier ones on prehistoric, Asuka, Nara, Heian, and Kamakura Hokuriku. It covers the Muromachi period (1336–1573), including the Sengoku decades of its second half; the ends of the Ikkō Ikki and of the Etchū castles run into the early 1580s. It is again centred on Kanazawa, Toyama, and Komatsu, the three places this trip passes through.

The main thread of Muromachi Hokuriku is the rise and fall of the Togashi as shugo of Kaga against the Honganji followers. The Togashi took the office in 1335 and placed their headquarters at Nonoichi; in the Chōkyō uprising of 1488 the shugo Togashi Masachika was overthrown by the Ikkō Ikki. On the Honganji side, Shakunyo founded Zuisen-ji at Inami in Etchū in 1390 and Rennyo began preaching at Yoshizaki in Echizen in 1471, and the followers’ organisation spread across Kaga and Etchū. The first reliable documentary appearance of the name Kanazawa is the Kanazawa bōsha of 1546, the Honganji hall known as the Kanazawa Midō.

1. What the Muromachi Period Was

The Muromachi period usually runs from 1336, when Ashikaga Takauji took control of the Kyoto government (he became shogun in 1338), to 1573, when Ashikaga Yoshiaki was driven out of Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga. The first sixty years are the period of the rival Northern and Southern Courts; from the Ōnin War of 1467 onward it is the Sengoku period¹. The shogunate sat in the Muromachi district of Kyoto, and the provinces were governed by shugo daimyo. Unlike the Kamakura shugo, whose authority was largely military, the Muromachi shugo gradually absorbed the powers of the provincial office and became the effective lords of their provinces.

Hokuriku left more from this period that can still be visited than from any of the five earlier ones: a governor’s residence, a temple hall, temples, mountain castles, kiln sites, a harbour. The written sources are mainly shugo appointment records, temple and shrine documents, the diaries of Honganji abbots, and local excavation reports; central legal documents and governors’ diaries are no longer the principal material.

2. The Togashi as Kaga Shugo, and the Chōkyō Uprising of 1488

The Togashi, mentioned in the Kamakura note, were based in Togashi-gō, along the middle reaches of the Takahashi River between present-day Nonoichi and Kanazawa. In 1335 Togashi Takaie became the first of the family to serve as shugo of Kaga, and placed the provincial headquarters at Nonoichi — the Togashi residence². The political centre of Muromachi Kaga was Nonoichi, not Kanazawa.

The family’s troubles began at home. In 1441 Togashi Norie angered Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori, was stripped of the shugo office, and was replaced by his younger brother Yasutaka³; the family stayed split into two lines for decades afterwards. In 1488 the followers of the Ikkō sect made Yasutaka — Masachika’s uncle — the figurehead of their alliance and rose against the shugo Togashi Masachika. Yasutaka established his camp at Daijō-ji in Nonoichi while the rebels surrounded Masachika in Takao Castle. Fighting began on the fifth day of the sixth month; the fierce engagement at Nukaguchi on the sixth made the rebels’ victory decisive, and Masachika took his own life on the ninth³.

After 1488 the Kaga Ikkō Ikki kept a Togashi as nominal shugo while the province was in practice self-administered by Honganji followers, an arrangement that lasted until Oda forces occupied northern Kaga and its centre at Kanazawa Bō in 1580⁴. The often-quoted phrase hyakushō no mochitaru kuni — a province held by the peasants — comes from the Jitsugoki Shūi of Jitsugo, a son of Rennyo. It is a line later writers extracted when summarising this period of self-rule, not a contemporary official title⁴.

The Togashi residence site in Nonoichi and the Takao Castle site in southern Kanazawa are about twenty minutes apart by car. The Takao lookout gives a view over the city and out to the Japan Sea⁵.

3. Rennyo and the Honganji Network in Hokuriku

Shinshū spread through Hokuriku by way of networks of temples, family ties, and congregations.

The first step was in Etchū. In 1390 Shakunyo, fifth abbot of Honganji, founded Zuisen-ji at Inami. He composed a Kanjinjō, a subscription appeal, and raised funds from supporters across the six provinces of Kaga, Noto, Etchū, Echigo, Shinano, and Hida⁶. Half a century later, in 1442, Nyojō — the second abbot of Zuisen-ji — founded Honsen-ji at Futamata in Kaga and held both posts at once⁷. Honsen-ji’s garden, the Kuzan Hakkai no Niwa, is traditionally said to have been laid out by Rennyo in 1471; Ishikawa Prefecture describes it as a typical Muromachi garden and one of the oldest medieval gardens in the prefecture⁷. The attribution to Rennyo is temple tradition; the dating is the prefecture’s cultural-property assessment.

In 1471 Rennyo built his hall at Yoshizaki in Echizen and began preaching, and Honganji influence spread in earnest through Kaga⁸. What that organisation looked like on the ground is clearest at Komatsu. Rennyo’s third son Renkō was invited by his elder brother Renjō, then abbot of Futamata Honsen-ji, to open a hall at Ikejō in Nomi District; he then moved to Furuya, and around 1478 to Hasadani. Because the place had many pines, Renkō renamed Furuya as Matsuoka, and his hall accordingly became Matsuoka-ji⁸. Known as the Lord of Hasadani, Renkō was ranked with Rengo of Wakamatsu Honsen-ji and Rensei of Yamada Kōkyō-ji as the Three Temples of Kaga and the three great abbots of the mountains. He also opened a branch hall at Ayutaki in the Yamanouchi area of Nomi District, drawing the district’s followers together and leading the Nomi contingent of the Kaga Ikkō Ikki⁸.

In the spring of 1481 a punitive force led by Ishiguro Mitsuyoshi, lord of Fukumitsu Castle, met the Ikkō followers of Zuisen-ji on the bed of the Yamada River at Taya. The source reports that Zuisen-ji is said to have won decisively, and records that the followers went on to force the surrender of the lord of Nojiri Castle and bring the whole of Tonami District under their control⁹; Zuisen-ji’s own chronology names the opponents as the Ishiguro and the monks of Sōkai-ji⁶. In 1506 the ikki defeated Nagao Yoshikage of Echigo at Hannyano⁶, the same Hannyano where the shogunate’s Hokuriku army fought in 1221, as the Kamakura note described.

Honsen-ji sits at the foot of Mount Iō east of Kanazawa, Zuisen-ji at Inami in Etchū, and between them is a mountain crossing. Nyojō held both temples, and the Shinshū centres of Kaga and Etchū were linked along that road.

4. Kanazawa Arrives: The Kanazawa Midō of 1546

According to Ishikawa Prefecture’s Kanazawa Castle Park, the Kanazawa Midō is said to have been founded in 1546 by Shōnyo, tenth abbot of the Ōsaka Honganji, as a branch temple; a temple town formed around it, and it became the centre of faith for Hokuriku followers¹⁰.

The first documented appearance of the name Kanazawa falls in the same year. As the Kanazawa City Library has summarised the question: the Nihon Rekishi Chimei Taikei cites the entry for the tenth month of 1546 in the Tenbun Nikki, referring to the Kanazawa bōsha, the Kanazawa Midō, as an early example, while the Kanō Kyōdo Jii quotes an entry from the same month reading Kashū Kanazawa bōsha. The two works cite different days — the twenty-ninth and the twenty-fifth — but agree on the month and year¹¹. The Tenbun Nikki is the nineteen-year diary of Shōnyo, tenth abbot of Honganji, running from the first month of 1536 to the eighth month of 1554, recording Honganji ceremonies and dealings with branch temples, disciples, the court, nobles, daimyo, and townspeople¹².

Kinjō Reitaku beside Kenroku-en carries the Imohori Tōgorō origin tradition. The Kadokawa Nihon Chimei Daijiten records the theory deriving the name from a Kanaarai-zawa where gold dust was panned on the Kodatsuno plateau, and the Ishikawa Kenshi vol. 2 carries the Tōgorō story itself¹¹. Incidentally, the present reading Kanazawa was only fixed in the fifth month of 1866; from the early modern period to the end of the shogunate both Kanazawa and Kanezawa were in use¹¹.

5. The Other Half of Etchū: The Jinbō, Toyama Castle, and Masuyama Castle

Besides the Shinshū forces, Etchū held the Jinbō deputy governors, the Shiina of Niikawa District, and the Ishiguro of Tonami, with repeated invasions from the Nagao and Uesugi of Echigo.

Toyama City’s archaeology centre notes that dates proposed for the Jinbō construction range from 1519 to about 1560, and that the 1543 date proposed by Kubo Naofumi is currently regarded as the strongest given the circumstances of the time¹³. Once Jinbō Nagamoto became head of the family he pushed into Niikawa District, and around 1543 the area near Toyama-gō became a military frontier in an escalating conflict with the Shiina¹³. Tourist material often states flatly that Jinbō Nagamoto built the castle in 1543; that treats the strongest hypothesis as settled fact.

In 1560 Toyama Castle fell to Uesugi Kenshin’s forces and Nagamoto withdrew west to Masuyama Castle in Tonami. Control of the castle then changed hands rapidly among the Uesugi, the Shiina, the Jinbō, and the Ikkō forces. Sassa Narimasa entered in 1581; in 1585, when Hideyoshi campaigned in Etchū in person, Narimasa surrendered the castle without a fight, and Hideyoshi ordered Maeda Toshinaga to dismantle it¹³.

Masuyama is counted with Matsukura Castle at Uozu and Moriyama Castle at Takaoka as one of the three great mountain castles of Etchū¹⁴. The Wada Castle that appears in Nanboku-chō sources is taken as its first mention; successive generations of the Jinbō, deputy governors under the Hatakeyama, held it as lords, and battles between the Jinbō and the Echigo Uesugi were fought here repeatedly, beginning with the clash between Jinbō Yoshimune and Nagao Yoshikage in 1506¹⁴. The castle town on the west bank of the Wadagawa was divided by a moated earthwork some 80 m long running north to south, with Shitamachi to the east and Teradoi-machi to the west. Excavated finds include Japanese and Chinese ceramics, nails, coins, whetstones, go stones, wooden objects such as lacquered bowls, and carbonised rice¹⁴. It was designated a National Historic Site on 23 July 2009¹⁴.

6. Medieval Komatsu: Harbour, Kilns, and Mountain Castle

The layers of the Kanjinchō tradition were covered in the Kamakura note. This section looks at the same ground in the Muromachi period: its harbour, its kilns, and its mountain castle.

Komatsu City’s material on the Ataka medieval grave group describes a cluster of medieval stone monuments near the mouth of the Kakehashi River on its left bank, where itabi slabs and five-tier stupas have been found. Ataka harbour was a key point connecting southern Kaga with the Japan Sea, and the Muromachi-period courtier’s diary Reizei Tamehiro Gekō Nikki records a night’s stay at Shōkō-ji along with the names Matsubara and Ataka Beach¹⁵. The dating can be sharpened. Komatsu City’s illustrated history says Tamehiro travelled through Kaga in the third month of 1491 in the party of the shogunal deputy Hosokawa Masamoto on its way down to Echigo, and on the return leg entered Ataka from Nonoichi on the nineteenth of the fourth month, stayed the night at Shōkō-ji, and continued along the coastal road¹⁶. The same source records that he crossed the Kakehashi bridge over the river, viewed the cherry blossom at Shirae, and composed a poem on seeing silk being woven at Motoori¹⁶. Ataka is a stage set in noh and kabuki — the noh play Ataka is of unknown authorship, was composed in the Muromachi period, has its earliest recorded performance in 1465, and the reading of the subscription scroll appears there for the first time¹⁷ — but in Tamehiro’s diary it is simply one lodging along a road.

Two highways crossed medieval southern Kaga: the coastal Hama-dōri road and the inland Naka-dōri road across the plain. The Naka-dōri road passed between the Shibayama, Imae, and Kiba lagoons and reached Motoori, a centre of Kaga silk production and a distribution hub for southern Kaga¹⁶. Dōkō of Shōgo-in also travelled this way in the sixth month of 1486 on his journey to the Kantō and the northeast¹⁶.

In the late Heian period potters of the Tokoname tradition were invited from Owari, and production of the medieval ware known as Kaga-yaki began on the hills running from Kozu to Nata in Komatsu. Fourteen kiln groups with forty-six kilns have been confirmed within the city; the main products were jars, wide-mouthed vessels, and mortars, and the ware was also used for ossuaries. Ninety-three stamped patterns have been identified, including geometric and floral designs, and the ware circulated mainly within Ishikawa but also reached northern Fukui and western Toyama¹⁸. A large jar excavated from Nata Daitennōdani Kiln No. 2 measures 56 cm across the mouth and 75 cm high, with the distinctive Kaga-yaki double chrysanthemum wheel stamp on its shoulder¹⁸. Production continued into the early Muromachi period, spanning some two centuries¹⁸.

Hasadani Castle stood on high ground along the Ōsugidani River in the upper Kakehashi valley. Its main period is Muromachi, and it is said to have been the seat of Utsuro, a commander on the Ikkō side. Excavation confirmed structural elements such as a turret base and stone facing, along with well-preserved earthworks and cut ditches. The enclosures divide into west and east: the west was a residential area with buildings, the east sat higher and served a defensive role¹⁹. Finds include Haji-ware dishes and ceramic sherds¹⁹. Along the ridge from it lies the site of Renkō’s Matsuoka-ji⁸; temple and castle stand next to each other. In the Kyōroku disorder of 1531 Matsuoka-ji was defeated, Renkō and others died, and the temple lapsed for a time⁸.

7. The Older Hakusan Establishment and Shinshū

Southern Komatsu already had a religious power structure built on Hakusan worship and the eight Chūgū temples long before Shinshū arrived.

Hakusan worship maintained bases called bamba in Kaga (Ishikawa), Echizen (Fukui), and Mino (Gifu); the Kaga base is today’s Shirayama Hime Shrine²⁰. The eight Chūgū temples were centred on Karumi-gō in Nomi District and consisted of Gokoku-ji, Shōryū-ji, Shōkoku-ji, Renge-ji, Zenkō-ji, Chōkan-ji, and Yūsen-ji, together with nearby Ryūmyō-ji — a religious power network covering Nomi and Enuma Districts²¹. In the eighth month of 1176, when the Kaga deputy governor Fujiwara no Morotsune burned Yūsen-ji, the incident escalated into an attack on the provincial office by the temples’ monks²¹.

Their power declined during the Nanboku-chō period. In the third month of 1335 the Kenmu government’s judicial office rejected as unlawful an incursion into Nomi Estate by the Chūgū chief priest Genkō and others, and by the Kōei era (1342–45) the eight temples had fallen²¹. The reasons are not certain, but the usual explanation is that their monks sided with the Southern Court during the civil war²¹. Nata-dera, one of the three temples of Enuma District, belonged to Ashikaga Takauji’s Northern Court camp from the outset of the conflict and was the only Chūgū-affiliated temple to survive and grow. It later left the Tendai school and deepened its ties with the Shingon temples Kanshō-ji in Yamashiro and Kongōō-in of Daigo-ji²¹.

Nata-dera in turn fell into ruin in the fighting of the Ikkō Ikki, and was rebuilt in the early Edo period by Maeda Toshitsune, third lord of Kaga²². The religious conflict in Kaga was a contest between newly arrived Honganji followers and an established Hakusan establishment occupying the same foothills.

8. The Last Stand in the Hakusan Foothills: Torigoe and Futoge

The Kaga Ikkō Ikki ends in the Hakusan foothills. Torigoe Castle stands on a hill 312 m high between the Tedori River and its tributary the Dainichi River; Futoge Castle sits on an isolated peak 268 m high across the Dainichi. Together they form the National Historic Site Torigoe Castle Site with Futoge Castle Site — the stronghold of the Hakusan-foothill Ikkō Ikki, which resisted Oda Nobunaga’s offensive to the last, held by the Yamanouchi band under Suzuki Dewa-no-kami²³.

After Shibata Katsuie took Kanazawa Gobō in 1580 the Yamanouchi band kept fighting; they rose again in 1581 and retook both castles, only to be suppressed by Sakuma Morimasa of the Oda side. They rose once more in 1582, more than three hundred were executed, and the Kaga Ikkō Ikki was destroyed²³. The Sekai Daihyakka Jiten dates the close of the self-administered province called hyakushō no mochitaru kuni to the destruction of the Yamanouchi (Tedori valley) ikki in 1582⁴.

Torigoe has yielded ceramics — a celadon tripod incense burner, white porcelain dishes, blue-and-white bowls, tenmoku tea bowls — along with weapons including swords and matchlock shot²³. Ritual vessels, everyday vessels, and weapons came out of the same site.

Sakuma Morimasa became the first lord of the site of the Kanazawa Midō, and Maeda Toshiie entered Kanazawa Castle from Nanao in Noto in 1583¹⁰. Sassa Narimasa destroyed Inami Zuisen-ji in 1581⁶ and entered Toyama Castle the same year¹³. Kaga and Etchū passed under the Oda–Toyotomi regime, and the early-modern Kaga domain of a million koku begins here.

9. Places You Can Visit Today

Most of the places mentioned in this note can be visited.

References