The first feudal lord Maeda Toshiie entered Kanazawa Castle in 1583,and he started building the castle earnestly. Reportedly, he invited Takayama Ukon.
Who was well known as a Christian lord at that time, to learn how to build a great castle.
But the space was not big enought at that time because the vassals’ mansions were located in the castle.
The donjon was burned down by lightning in 1602, but a new donjon was never rebuilt. lnstead,a three-story turret and Hon-maru Palace were built in Hon-maru, the central enclosure.
After a fire in 1631, the structure of the castle drastically changed.
For example. Ni-no-maru, the second enclosure, was expanded,the Tatumi Canal was built through the castle, and the vassal’s
mansions moved out of the castle. About this time, the moats were built, and the boundary of eachenclosure was finished.
A big fire in 1759 destroyed almost the whole castle.
After this fire, the functions of feudal government were centralized in the Ni-no-maru, the second enclosure.
The existing lshikawa-mon is the reconstruction built in 1788.
In the recent project, Hishi Yagura. Gojukken Nagaya, and Hashizume-mon Tsuzuki Yagura were reconstructed.
These buildings were once rebuilt, after a Ni-no-maru fire in 1808,
but were burned down again by anotherfire 1881. The current buildings have been designed based on how they looked in the 1850s.