Gold leaf

The city's name means "golden marsh." Gold beating was established here under the Maeda lords, and after a period when the shogunate restricted production outside Edo and Kyoto, Kanazawa ended up with the entire industry. Today the city produces something on the order of 99% of Japan's gold leaf.

Why here, specifically

Gold leaf is beaten between sheets of specially treated paper. That paper has to hold a precise moisture content, and dry air ruins it. Kanazawa sits on the Sea of Japan coast under grey, humid skies for much of the year — the same weather that makes the winters miserable makes the paper behave.

There is a local saying that you should not forget your umbrella even if you forget your lunch. The gold industry is what that weather bought.

One gram of gold beats out to about a square metre of leaf. It is applied with a bamboo tool and static electricity, because a breath will destroy it and a fingertip certainly will.

Where it goes

Kanazawa leaf is on the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, on Nikko's Toshogu, on Buddhist altars in hundreds of thousands of Japanese homes, and on the lacquerware and ceramics this region produces.

It is also, now, on ice cream. A soft-serve cone wrapped in a whole sheet of gold leaf is Kanazawa's most photographed object, costs around ¥900, and tastes exactly like soft-serve — gold has no flavour. Everyone buys one anyway, including Japanese tourists, and there is no reason not to.

Doing it yourself

Several workshops in the city run haku-oshi sessions where you apply leaf to a small box, plate or set of chopsticks. It takes about an hour, costs a few thousand yen, and produces something genuinely worth carrying home.

It is also the fastest way to understand the material. You will destroy your first sheet. That is the lesson.