Kanazawa City Ashigaru Museum

The Kanazawa City Ashigaru Museum consists of two traditional wooden houses with dark, weather-beaten timber walls and heavy, low-slung tile roofs. These buildings housed foot soldiers, or ashigaru, who served the Maeda clan during the Edo period. While high-ranking samurai lived in expansive estates, these soldiers occupied modest, standardized quarters assigned based on their rank. A local scroll depicts a soldier named Shichihei living here in eighteen sixty-eight, meticulously recording every pot, bowl, and garment he kept inside these cramped rooms.