Kakunodate, Semboku

Kakunodate in Semboku is a samurai-quarter preservation district in the inland southeast of Akita Prefecture, covering about 6.9 hectares. It was a castle town laid out in 1620 by the Ashina clan and later taken over by the Satake Kita family. The preservation district lies almost in the middle of the former samurai quarter, where the residential plots of upper- and middle-ranking samurai stood. It was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1976. The district also contains the Kabazaiku (cherry-bark craft) Museum.

Semboku City explains that if you put the town-plan map of the Kyoho era beside today's preservation district, you can confirm that the townscape created in 1620 has not changed. By that account, the street layout here is inherited from one drawn at the start of the Edo period. Walls continue along wide streets, and the plot divisions of the late Edo period survive, with the arrangement of main house, gate and storehouse.

What shapes this landscape is the large weeping cherry trees and firs. The weeping cherries, over 300 years old, are a nationally designated Natural Monument, and together with the firs they form dense groves that join the layout to make the townscape. The city says that the town became known as a place of samurai residences and cherry blossoms because of continued townscape improvement after selection and, above all, the opening of the Akita Shinkansen in 1997. Whatever the season, the width of the plots and the height of the walls are worth checking together with the shade the groves cast on the streets.

Several houses can be seen from the inside. The Iwahashi residence is open in all its rooms and was designated a national Important Cultural Property in January 2026. The Odano residence is also open in all rooms, and the Kawarada residence has been open for a fee under the city since 2021, when its repair work was finished. At the former Matsumoto residence there are demonstrations of itaya-craft, and the former Aoyagi and Ishiguro residences are opened by corporate bodies. The Onozaki residence, a house for a chief retainer of the Satake Kita family, was reconstructed on the site of the Kakunodate High School gymnasium and opened in 2001, and it also contains a community hall, a martial arts hall and an archery range.

Residents' efforts continue as well. In 2001 an association to protect the townscape of the preservation district was formed and a residents' charter was enacted. In 2007 an ordinance banning smoking on the streets in the district was adopted. During the cherry blossom festival and the autumn leaf season, local elementary, junior high and high school students serve as guides to Kakunodate. Until 2019, more than two million tourists visited each year and over 400,000 of them toured the samurai residences. Numbers fell sharply in 2020 because of COVID-19, and the city says they have been gradually recovering since.