The Town You Can Hear Being Carved
Inami, Nanto City: woodcarving and a temple road
Walk the stone-paved street in Inami and you hear chisels working behind the lattice fronts. Around two hundred carvers live in this small town in Nanto, Toyama Prefecture, and most of them are still at the bench.
Yokamachi Street, running from the town toward Zuisenji temple
A temple that taught the craft
Inami exists as it does because of Zuisenji, the temple founded here in 1390. It burned repeatedly, and each time local temple carpenters rebuilt it. During the reconstruction that began in 1763, the Hongwanji in Kyoto sent its official carver, Maekawa Sanshiro, and the carpenters of Inami learned from him. What began as decoration for temples spread into transom panels, lion heads and other work made for ordinary houses.
Two things kept the craft here: the rebuilding never quite stopped, and the carvers went on living at the temple gate. Between them they have held a concentration of woodcarvers in one small town for close to three centuries. Inami carving was designated a national traditional craft in 1975, and in 2018 the town was recognised as a Japan Heritage site under the title "Inami, a museum of woodcarving born from a temple carpenter's chisel".
Even the town's signboards are carved
Yokamachi Street
Yokamachi, the approach road to Zuisenji, is where a visit begins. Machiya townhouses with wooden lattice fronts line a stone-paved street, and behind them sit carving studios, a sake brewery, confectioners and soba restaurants. The shop signs are carved. So are the eaves brackets, and the bus stop. Somewhere along the street, a chisel is always working.
Most studios are open, and carvers are used to being watched. In one, a craftsman unrolled the full-size drawing for a transom panel and explained how it would be cut. One person handles the whole job, from the drawing to the final surface. Carvers here keep between two and three hundred chisels and bring the wood to a sheen with the chisel alone, without sanding.
A carver with the working drawing for a transom panel
The wood is mostly zelkova and camphor. A wide single board has to dry for years before it can be cut without splitting, so the waiting often takes longer than the carving.
Along one wall, finished transom panels are displayed at eye level. Each is cut from a single thick board and worked from both faces, so that the openings resolve into a second scene when seen from behind: birds and flowers on one side, a landscape on the other.
A transom panel cut from one board and carved from both sides
In a glass case, a flatfish. It is wood. Every fin ray and every scale is cut, and for a moment the material stops registering. Pieces like this exist to demonstrate what the hand can do, and Inami has a tradition of them.
A carved flatfish, in the virtuoso tradition the town is known for
Looking for cats
There is a second way to walk this street. Carved wooden cats are placed all over it: under eaves, on top of signs, beside doorways. Around thirty of them are said to be hiding in plain sight, and the town hands out a map for finding them. Some have names.
A cat under the eaves. This one is called Ina
It is a carving town's idea of a game, and a good reason to walk the same street two or three times over.
Zuisenji
The street ends at the temple. The main gate is built entirely of zelkova and carved with dragons and celestial figures; through it stands the main hall, completed in 1885 and among the largest wooden temple buildings in the Hokuriku region. Beside it, the Taishido hall of 1918 is one of the largest of its kind in Japan.
The approach to Zuisenji
The main hall in rain
It rained on the day of our visit. Wet timber darkens, and the carving under the eaves gains depth as the shadows deepen. There were few people, and nothing to hear but the rain. Fine weather is not always the better weather here.
Staying, rather than passing through
Inami has an inn whose rooms are scattered through the town and whose guests can be taught to carve by the craftsmen themselves. A day visit gets you as far as watching; staying lets you take the hours at the bench home with you. Dinner is at a soba house or a small restaurant in the town, and in the morning you walk the same street again. The shape of the stay follows the shape of the town.
Nanto also holds the thatched villages of Gokayama and the silk-weaving town of Johana, so Inami works well as a base for the wider area. The festival floats pulled through Yatsuo, in Toyama City, every 3 May carry carving from Inami. These places sit closer together than a map suggests.
Visiting
Inami, Nanto City, Toyama Prefecture
About 15 minutes by car from Tonami IC on the Hokuriku Expressway; roughly one hour from Kanazawa Station and 50 minutes from Toyama Station.
Yokamachi Street is free to walk at any time. Several studios accept visits and offer carving experiences; the local visitor centre can arrange these. Zuisenji charges an admission fee.