At Kurikara Pass, the road narrows and the tree cover thickens before opening onto the ridge where, in 1183, the armies of the Taira and Minamoto clashed. The place is called Kurikara, and the name recurs across Tsubata-machi — in the temple, the park, the festival — as if the town has never quite finished processing that afternoon. Kurikara Fudoji, a Shingon temple founded in the early eighth century, sits above the pass, its principal image the Kurikara Fudo Myoo, a deity coiled in the form of a dragon around a sword. Pilgrims still come on weekdays, without ceremony.
The lower ground is a different world. The Kahoku Lagoon reclamation project turned marshland into flat agricultural fields, and it is here that sunflower oil — pressed from local crops — and makomo, an aquatic grass cultivated in the shallow remnants of the old wetlands, have become the town's particular produce. In late summer, the reclaimed plain at Himawari Mura fills with sunflowers in a density that registers more as color than as individual plants. The Shiratoori Shrine, known for rain prayers, and the Kaga Shrine, established by the feudal lord Maeda Tsunanori to protect the reclamation works, mark the spiritual geography of this flat, deliberate landscape.
Between these two registers — the pass and the plain — Tsubata functions as a junction town, as it has since the old Hokuriku Road split here toward the Noto Peninsula. The Tsuba-shishi lion dance gatherings, held across the town's neighborhoods, keep that community structure visible in the streets at intervals through the year.
Where to stay
A day is rarely enough.
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What converges here
1 in this town. 27 within 25 km of the town office.
- Tsubata Museum of Local History
- Ishikawa Nishida Kitarō Museum of Philosophy
- Ishikawa Prefecture Kanazawa Port Ohno Karakuri Memorial Museum
- Ohi Museum
- Gyokusen-en
See 22 more
- Kenroku-en
- Seisonkaku
- Kanazawa University Museum
- Kanazawa Noh Museum
- Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art
- 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art
- Kaga-Honda Museum
- Ishikawa Prefectural History Museum
- Zeniya Gohei Memorial Museum
- Nishi Chaya Shiryokan Museum
- Nanto Fukumitsu Art Museum
- Ishikawa Museum of Natural History
- Fukuoka History and Folklore Museum of Takaoka City
- Nonoichi City Furusato History Museum
- Fukuoka Camera Museum
- Tonami Provincial Museum
- Tonami Art Museum
- Nakagawa Kazumasa Memorial Museum of Art
- Chiyo-Jo Haiku Museum
- Tonami Sankyoson Museum
- Hakusan City Museum
- Train Park Hakusan
Distances are straight-line from the municipal office. Each website was checked in September 2026. Some locations © OpenStreetMap contributors.
- Kamo Site
- Tsubata
- Kurikara
- Kurikara
- Tsubata
- Nakatsuhata
- Hontsubata
- Nose