The Tokugawa shogunate's building restrictions were not suggestions. After consolidating power in the early 1600s, the shoguns prohibited regional lords from constructing buildings taller than three stories -- a rule designed to prevent feudal domains from fortifying themselves against central authority. The Maeda clan, lords of the enormously wealthy Kaga Domain, had particular reason to worry. Their domain was the second richest in Japan after the Tokugawa holdings themselves, making them a perpetual target for suspicion. Maeda Toshitsune's solution was architectural subterfuge. He relocated a chapel that had originally stood within Kanazawa Castle to the Tera-machi temple district south of the castle, and ordered the construction of a full temple around it. Tera-machi was itself strategic: the district's cluster of temples formed a defensive buffer zone that could slow an invading army's advance toward the castle. From any angle outside, Myoryuji presents two stories and a modest roofline. Inside, its four stories and seven-layered internal structure compress space in ways that defy intuition.

The temple's interior is a catalog of deception. Hanging scrolls conceal doors behind them. Wooden staircases contain trapdoors that drop intruders into pits two to three meters deep. The offering box near the entrance has a removable inner compartment -- pull it out and the box becomes a trap, swallowing anyone standing on it. Some rooms can be entered freely but cannot be opened from the inside, turning them into holding cells for captured enemies. Floors that appear solid slide away to reveal hidden chambers below. The corridors and staircases are deliberately confusing, designed so that an attacker unfamiliar with the layout would quickly become disoriented while defenders could move through the building by routes invisible to anyone else. A lookout post at the top of the structure provides a commanding view of the surrounding area, allowing sentries to spot approaching forces and relay warnings to Kanazawa Castle.

At the center of Myoryuji sits a well approximately 25 meters deep. It is not just a water source. Near the bottom, a horizontal tunnel branches off into the earth. According to the temple's own history, this passage once connected to a tunnel leading directly to Kanazawa Castle, providing an underground escape route that would allow the temple's defenders to alert the castle garrison of an attack without ever appearing above ground. Whether the full tunnel still exists or has collapsed over the centuries is a matter of some debate, but the well and its horizontal branch are real and visible during guided tours. The well also served a practical defensive purpose: it provided a reliable water supply during a siege, ensuring the temple could sustain its occupants even if cut off from the outside. The entire building is constructed around this well as its structural and strategic core.

Myoryuji is, for all its military cleverness, a functioning Buddhist temple. It belongs to the Nichiren sect and traces its origins to 1585, when Maeda Toshiie, the founding daimyo of the Kaga Domain, established a chapel within Kanazawa Castle as a prayer space. The relocation to Tera-machi in 1643 was simultaneously an act of piety and an act of strategic defiance against the Tokugawa government. The temple's walls and roof were built to extraordinary standards of durability, capable of withstanding both the typhoons and heavy snowfall that batter Kanazawa's Sea of Japan coast. Today, Myoryuji requires advance reservations to visit and allows entry only through guided tours conducted in Japanese. Visitors file through the labyrinthine interior in small groups, watching as guides demonstrate trap doors, hidden staircases, and false walls. The building has survived earthquakes, wars, and the end of feudalism. It remains exactly what its builders intended: a place where nothing is what it appears to be.