AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Okurōdō Monument (屋漏堂碑, Okurōdō-hi) is a quiet stone stele set beside the Kuratsuki waterway in Kanazawa's former samurai quarter. It marks ground once held by the Murai family, one of the domain's senior houses, and tells a small, haunting episode from the days of the Kaga Maeda clan—a tale of a poor-looking retainer whose frayed, leaking roof hid a treasure of ready arms and gold.↗
Unassuming and easy to overlook, the monument rewards the curious passer-by with a clear explanatory board and a piece of bushidō philosophy distilled into a single name: Okurōdō, "the hall of the leaking roof." It makes a thoughtful little stop when combined with the nearby Nagamachi samurai alleys and the willow-lined waterway.↗↗
Why a leaking roof became a name
In the Edo period this site lay within the upper residence of the Murai family, a high-ranking house among the so-called Kaga Hakkai, the eight senior lineages of the domain. During the era of the fifth lord Maeda Tsunanori—when Kaga cultivated its famed culture as much as its arms—a retainer of a thousand koku named Sassa Tonomo lived in such straitened circumstances that his roof leaked and he let it stay unrepaired.
