Higashiyama Higashi (Higashi Chaya), Kanazawa

Higashiyama Higashi is a teahouse district east of the Asano River in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. It was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings on 14 November 2001 and covers about 1.8 hectares. Kanazawa City's material says that teahouse buildings from the late Edo to the early Meiji period remain clustered in the district.

The teahouse district opened in 1820 (Bunsei 3), and at the time it also went by the names Utatsu teahouse district and Asano River teahouse district. Set the town plans from before and after side by side and you can see that the division of the town was remade at that moment. Its path was not smooth: it was abolished in 1831 (Tenpo 2), and official recognition returned only in 1867 (Keio 3). From the Meiji period it was known as Higashi Shinchi or Higashi, ranking first among the city's teahouse districts in both standing and liveliness, and it links Kanazawa's teahouse culture to the present. The National Council of Traditional Building Preservation Districts notes that few districts in Japan keep the atmosphere of a teahouse town so well, and counts this as one of them.

Two clues to the buildings are the lattice (de-goshi) projecting on the ground floor facing the street, and the taller second floor, where the tatami rooms are placed. Teahouse-style townhouses line the street, and the individual buildings keep a similar composition. The 1820 plan replaced an irregular layout with regular blocks, and the way both sides of the street look aligned is one of the district's features.

On preservation, Kanazawa enacted a preservation ordinance in 1976 and set up a subsidy system for restoring teahouse-quarter streetscapes in 1984. The Higashiyama Higashi district was selected as a national district in 2001, the same year a survey report was compiled. Kazuemachi, also in Kanazawa, is a teahouse district too and was selected in 2008 (about 0.6 hectares). Kanazawa City says that historic townscapes, represented by these districts, are popular with visitors. It also makes the conservation and use of machiya the core of its heritage-based town planning, and opened the Kanazawa Machiya Information Bank in fiscal 2005. The Kanazawa Craftsmen University, which passes on traditional skills, opened in 1996.

If you combine it with its surroundings, Kazuemachi, with the Asano River flowing in front of it, is a natural next stop, and there are other districts such as the Utatsuyama foothills and Teramachidai. According to the city material, these are temple towns selected in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and their feature is the combination of temples and shrines with townhouses. Walking in succession through districts of different character, teahouse and temple towns, gives a three-dimensional picture of how the castle town of Kanazawa was put together. Preservation activities are carried out by residents' groups such as the Society to Protect the Townscape and Culture of Kanazawa Higashiyama Higashi.