Yasue Gold Leaf Museum

photo by 金沢市 · CC BY 2.1 jp

photo by 金沢市 · CC BY 2.1 jp

Kanazawa makes 99% of Japan's gold leaf, 1/10,000 of a mm thick.

The museum holds the collection of master goldbeater Yasue Takaaki: visitors see tools, finished works and the sheets on which the gold is beaten to a thickness of one ten-thousandth of a millimetre, thin enough to let light through.

A municipal museum dedicated to master goldbeater Yasue Takaaki, opened to bring together his collection of gold-leaf tools and works and show it to the public; it turned 50 in 2025. Kanazawa produces about 99% of Japan's gold leaf, a primacy rooted in the seventeenth century, when the Kaga domain obtained from the shogunate a licence that elsewhere was reserved for the central government; the humid climate, which slows the drying of the sheets, is the reason the craft took root here.

ℹ️ Open 9:30–17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed on Tuesdays (or the following weekday if it is a public holiday) and over New Year. Tickets: adults 310 yen, over-65s and people with disabilities 210 yen, high school students and younger free. 5 minutes' walk from the Hashiba-chō bus stop, in the same block as Higashi Chaya. Service note: the museum announced a closure for internal works from 01/12/2025 to 05/03/2026, already over as of the date of this page (September 2026).

🚉 Hokutetsu Kanazawa · 22 min walk

Sources: kanazawa-museum.jp · hot-ishikawa.jp

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