Japan Trip 2012, Day 10 - Kenroku-en

Having walked around the castle enough to be satisfied with what I saw, I then exited via the Ishikawa-mon and onto a bridge leading directly to my next destination, Kenroku-en, the Kanazawa Castle garden.

Pictures: http://caelk.shutterfly.com/pictures/556

Originally, the garden surrounded the private villa of the fifth Lord of Kaga, Maeda Tsunanori. I guess one day he woke up and decided he wanted his own personal resort somewhere close to the castle, and so he started construction on said resort, Renchi O-chin, and had it surrounded with a garden. When he had finished, the garden housed three teahouses, a fountain, a stable, flower gardens (within the garden), and then some. The garden, at this time, was named Renchi-tei. It's said that the names of both the villa and the garden were taken from the fact that before construction, the area had a lotus pond. Taking the characters for lotus pond (蓮池) and reading them differently gave the pronunciation "Renchi", and thus the place received its first name.

When I entered Kenroku-en, I found myself generally in a wooded area. I took a slight detour to the right, and while there were paths, there were also trees everywhere. I eventually came upon a fountain, which ended up being Japan's oldest fountain. It is thought to have been made in July 1861 (no one knows for sure), but the site where it stands is the approximate location of the original villa, Renchi O-chin. Renchi O-chin would gradually rot and decay, and Tsunanori's successor would tear it down and reconstruct it in another location.

The major pond in the garden is the Kasumigaike, which sits in the center of the garden. In the middle of the lake, there's an island called Hourai-jima that was made to be in the shape of a turtle to symbolize longetivity. The twelfth Lord of Kaga, Maeda Narinaga, actually built a manor called Takezawa O-chin somewhere around this region, despite the fact that the Maeda family's school and seven retainers' houses were here. It was completed in 1822, and upon its completion, he invited Shirakawa Rakuo (more commonly known as Matsudaira Sadanobu) to rename the garden. Rakuo then gave the name Kenroku-en, based on the observation that the garden combined six features every garden should find important: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, waterways, and panoramas. He got the idea from a gardening book by Li Gefei, a Chinese poet.

However, Narinaga was only able to live at Takezawa O-chin for a year and seven months before he died at age 42. His successor Nariyasu would tear it down, and use part of the grounds to expand the Kasumigaike here. When he finished digging in 1837, its size finally increased to around 5800 square meters.

At the south section of the garden, I came across a statue of Yamato Takeru, a legendary figure whose exploits are detailed in the oldest historical chronicle of Japan, the Kojiki (though it contains myths and epics, rather than historical fact). It was erected in 1880 in honor of the fallen warriors of Ishikawa Prefecture during the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. Three large stones with inscriptions flank the statue on both sides, and are written entirely in Chinese characters. Further into the garden past the statue is a more secluded section of the garden that not many visitors go to - if you're looking to relax or get away from the bustle around Kasumigaike, you can duck back here and be relatively undisturbed.

Circling around the garden, I got to the surviving section of the rebuilt Renchi O-chin, which is now a teahouse called Shigure-tei. As stated earlier, it was built by the sixth Lord of Kaga, Maeda Yoshinori, as a replacement for the original aging villa in 1725. It ended up surviving the Great Houreki Fire in 1759, and continued to be maintained until sometime in the beginning of the Meiji Period. It was apparently lost sometime after this, and the current Shigure-tei is a reconstruction of part of that building.

The last part of the garden left for me to visit was the second pond on the premises, Hisago-ike. This part of the garden, as well as others, didn't entirely survive the Great Houreki Fire unlike Shigure-tei, though reconstruction efforts took around 15 years before they started. Reconstruction was overseen by the eleventh Lord of Kaga, Maeda Harunaga, who also added to the garden the Midori-taki (a waterfall), and Yuugao-tei (a teahouse). I guess since this is in another corner of the garden (and the far corner at that), not a lot of people were wandering around here, and I was able to look around the place and take pictures in privacy. That also could have been because it was getting close to closing time, though.

Honestly speaking, though... I'm not really a garden connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, so I can only say that the garden was really nice. It definitely topped the one I saw in Hikone, and there was enough tree cover and seclusion in certain areas to keep things peaceful. I ended up enjoying Hisago-ike the most, though the area around the fountain and the area behind the statue were also pretty nice... which I guess means that I like the secluded, wooded areas of the place. Anyone here will label this garden a must-see, and at the very least, I'd recommend everybody at least take a look.

Pictures: http://caelk.shutterfly.com/pictures/556