Rikugien Garden

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Translated, the name of this garden means the six traditional elements essential to great poetry, a wonderful, romantic sentiment in itself for a garden stroll, but especially apt because the idea has been taken through to the design and layout of this garden which carefully depicts 88 scenes from a classic poem.

These scenes are like landscapes in miniature, a particularly Japanese concept, wound through by a web of pathways with several tea house stops along the way. A large central man made lake provided the soil to make the miniature mountains, islands, hills, water features and forests.

This is an excellent example of the differences between eastern and western aesthetics and an exceptionally beautiful example of the Japanese landscape style, but most astounding is the intricacy and detail

The park, in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, was built around the end of the 17th, beginning of the 18th Century during the Edo period, by a poet no less, and made its way into tourist guide books quite quickly. Many of the plants, and there is a very wide assortment of species, are from the original planting or else clippings from the original planting.

Allow an hour for a proper stroll not including tea house stop offs. You will know the entrance from the elegant weeping cherry tree by the gate.

5 / 5 Review by expert member Emile Harridan