Enuma God President Ryutei

Enuma Shrine Chōryūtei: A Riverside Pavilion Built for a Lord Who Rarely Came Home

In the autumn of 1709, Maeda Toshinao, third lord of the Daishōji domain, had a small pavilion raised at the corner of his residence garden in what is now Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture. It was set deliberately close to the Daishōji River, so that the water became part of the view from inside. People first called it the Kawabata-otei, the "riverside pavilion." Only later did it take the name Chōryūtei, borrowed from Toshinao's own literary pen name.

Today the building stands at the northwest corner of Enuma Shrine, a single-storey structure measuring about 9.5 metres along its front and 8.4 metres deep, roofed in thin wooden shingles. It is one of the few buildings of the old Daishōji domain to survive, and since 1950 it has held the rank of Important Cultural Property.

The Lord Who Built It

Maeda Toshinao was born in Edo in 1672 into the family that ruled the Daishōji domain, a branch of the powerful Kaga domain. Daishōji was unusual in that its lords never built a castle. Instead they governed from a fortified residence, the Daishōji jin'ya, on flat ground where two rivers met.

Toshinao took up the lordship in 1692, but his career kept him away. He had won the favour of the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, and served in close attendance at Edo Castle, an honour rarely extended to the heir of a branch domain. For most of his life he lived in the capital, hundreds of kilometres from Daishōji.

The pavilion went up in the very year Tsunayoshi died and Toshinao lost his post at court. He returned to the domain little, and died the following year at the age of thirty-eight. The retreat he commissioned by the river was, by most accounts, a place he himself scarcely used.

Why It Is Designated

Chōryūtei was first listed as a National Treasure under the older system in January 1934. When Japan reorganised its heritage law in 1950, the building was reclassified as an Important Cultural Property, the rank it carries now.

Its value lies in what it represents: a refined early-eighteenth-century retreat built in the sukiya manner, the architectural language that grew out of the tea ceremony and prized restraint over display. Local tradition credits the design to the great garden and architecture master Kobori Enshū. The attribution does not hold up to dates, since Enshū died in 1647, more than sixty years before construction. What survives is a building made in the Enshū taste rather than by his hand, and the connection is best understood as a tradition the domain liked to claim.

The Genroku era that produced it was a time of confident decoration, and the pavilion carries that spirit in its detail. The openwork carving of its transoms and the painted hanabishi and shippō patterns, geometric florals and interlocking rings, show a level of finish unusual for so small a structure.

What to Look For

The pleasure of Chōryūtei is in its proportions and its setting rather than in scale. Step back to the riverbank and you see the whole composition at once: the broad sweep of the hipped shingle roof, the deep earthen-floored eave that shelters the east face, the entrance set on the south side. The building was designed to be read together with the water in front of it.

Inside, the carved transoms reward slow looking. Cut as openwork rather than solid panels, they let light and air pass between rooms while framing a delicate pattern. The colouring on the woodwork has faded with three centuries, but the hanabishi-shippō motifs are still legible to anyone who pauses over them.

The roof itself is worth a moment. Kokerabuki, the technique of layering thin split-wood shingles, gives a soft, textured surface quite different from tile. The current roof was renewed from 1977 onward, following the same method used when the pavilion was new.

The interior is open to visitors, but only by advance reservation, so anyone hoping to see the transoms and the river view from inside should arrange a visit before arriving.

Around the Site

The shrine grounds reward unhurried walking. Enuma Shrine occupies part of the former domain residence and enshrines Maeda Toshiharu, the founder of the Daishōji line, alongside Sugawara no Michizane, the deified scholar revered as a god of learning. Beside the pavilion lies the old domain garden, a pond-and-stroll landscape designated a Place of Scenic Beauty by Kaga City, with an eight-plank zigzag bridge crossing to its central island. It is at its best when the maples turn in November.

Two other historic buildings share the precinct. The Chikkeikan, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property, was the country villa of Maeda Toshika, the fourteenth and last lord of Daishōji, moved here from elsewhere in the town. The Baikaan is a guest room relocated from the house of a Kitamaebune shipping merchant, a reminder of the trade that once enriched this coast.

Daishōji itself was the castle town of a domain rated at ten thousand koku, and traces of that past run through its streets. The town is the birthplace of Ko-Kutani porcelain, and the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Kutani Ware sits a short distance away. Walkers may also visit the museum devoted to Fukada Kyūya, the local author who wrote the classic survey of Japan's hundred famous mountains.

The pavilion is an easy walk from Daishōji Station on the JR line, and the hot-spring resorts of the Kaga Onsen district, Yamashiro, Yamanaka, and Katayamazu, lie within a short drive for those extending their stay.