Loved Forest of Tokyoite: Koishikawa Botanical Garden 小石川植物園

 

Tokyo has several big parks. But in terms of degree of educational facilities especially for botany, the best is a botanical garden, called Koishikawa Botanical Garden 小石川植物園 of the Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo. I normally don’t tell you my adventure outside of Kanagawa Prefecture. But today I stretched my legs a bit to visit this next-door forest. The reason? I found the place is very good for sorting out jumbled knowledge about the plants in my brain. No wonder. It’s the place for education, of course. All the plants in the Garden have name plates. Sometimes displays explain educational value from the vegetable. All are endorsed by the Tokyo University. It’s a textbook place. Besides, it is located, really, in the middle of megalopolis Tokyo. No difficulty to face access!

The southwest corner of the Botanical Garden.
We cannot enter from here.

There are two main metro stations to go to the Koishikawa Botanical Garden. One is Hakusan Station 白山駅 (I-13) of Mita Line 都営三田線, and another is Myogadani Station 茗荷谷駅 (M23) of Marunouchi Line 営団地下鉄丸ノ内線. The map from these stations can be seen here. If you google the place, please use the key word, 小石川植物園正門受付発売所 (in Japanese), or Koishikawa Botanical Garden (in English). From Hakusan Station, it’s less than 10 minutes’ walk. From Myogadani Station, it’s about 15 minutes’ to the Garden. Whichever place you choose for your starting point, the town around the garden is a residential area in the 20th-century Tokyo style. Not many skyscrapers. Kids, lots of, go to nearby school. I’ve been there with a lady coming from a very rural place from the west of Japan. She was impressed by kids playing in playgrounds of the area. You know, Japan is the country of senior citizens. Especially in countryside it is sometimes difficult to find a group of kids. Koishikawa district is in the middle of Tokyo, and lots of lots of young families congregate there for jobs, educational opportunities, convenience of city life, etc. etc. For them, I’m sure the Botanical Garden is very important place.

The Garden is secluded by this fence.

We have to pay to enter the garden. The price list can be found here. Please be philosophical for money strapped universities charging entrance fees. The Garden has a very long history. The place came out in Japanese history books when in 1652 the land was given to 6 years’ old Tokugawa Tokumatsu 徳川徳松, the 4th son of the 3rd Tokugawa Shogun Iemitsu 家光. Tokumatsu, or rather his father, built a nice mansion, and the boy grew up there. In 1653 when his eldest brother Ietsuna 家綱 became the 4th Tokugawa Shogun, Tokumatsu was given the adult name Tsunayoshi 綱吉. Sadly Tsunayoshi’s 3 elder brothers died young without heir. So, Tsunayoshi became the 5th Shogun in 1680. Tsunayoshi moved to Edo castle (the present-day Imperial Palace), and in 1684 his old home received specimens from the abolished Minami Herbarium 南薬園 in Minami-Azabu. The part of his garden was dedicated for Shogunate’s official herbarium of medicinal purposes. Later in 1721, the 8th Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune 徳川吉宗 expanded the herbarium covering the entire former mansion of Tsunayoshi, and beyond. It becomes more or less the current cite of Koishikawa Botanical Garden.

The entrance to the Garden

At the beginning, Yoshimune’s Palace Doctor was in charge of the herbarium. A bit later Shogun Yoshimune assigned two special samurais to take care of the herbarium and to manufacture medicines from the herbs. Half of the herbarium that was managed by Okada Rizaemon 岡田利左衛門 became in 1723 a hospital 小石川養生所 where commoners without money could come and be treated by trained MDs free of charge. The Garden was also used as an experimental farm to develop crops and vegetables for public welfare. One such vegetable was sweet potato. In 1735, scholar Aoki Konyoh 青木昆陽 was succeeded in harvesting sweet potato at Koishikawa Garden under cooler climate of Edo (Tokyo). His harvest was distributed especially famine-prone east and north Japan and saved lots of lives. As such, the place was a popular until around 1860 when the effect of European style polio vaccine became apparent, and the Shogunate established the official vaccination station in Akihabara. Traditional, aka Chinese, medicine employed in the Hospital was regarded outdated, and so the Koishikawa Hospital and Herbarium. The service of the place deteriorated.

Could you see a remnant of cobblestones?
It’s the place where people dried the herbs
harvested some 200 years ago.
The glasshouses behind are for research plants,
closed to the public.

The Garden keeps the tradition of
nurturing medicinal herbs.

In 1868 after Emperor Meiji moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, the new Japanese government determined to establish world class universities. They noticed the neglected Koishikawa Herbarium a good place for modern botany. In 1870, the former medicinal herbarium and hospital became Koishikawa Botanical Garden. Researching the history of the Garden, I’m impressed by the fact during the turbulent times, no one succeeded in destroying the forest and the herbarium of the site for, say, industrial factories or commercial shopping center et al. Many Japanese historical buildings and places were destroyed or sold by Meiji Government at that time. Numerous Japanese cultural treasures were dispersed to Europe or to the US. … Well, thanks to that, the impressionists in Paris could know Japanese Ukiyoe, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a series of excellent Buddhism statues. (I seriously think Boston’s collection of Buddha statues would be national treasures if they could have remained in Japan.) Why could the Koishikawa Herbarium survive? Admitting, huge trees are difficult to remove. … Maybe, people of the 19th century Tokyo kept emotional attachment to the Garden and the forest. And now we in the 21st century can enjoy the Shogun’s huge trees hundreds of years’ old.

The main college building in the Garden.
It’s normally closed to the public.

Speaking of the current research, the Garden is inviting visitors to experience VR of the anatomy of plants created by AI. It’s a kind of experimental show. The remaining schedule of the event is on March 10th and march 30th. Having fun there with VR-visors is free of charge (; entrance fee to the Garden is required). If you’re interested in the latest developments in Japanese academic botany, it will be an interesting opportunity. Next week, I tell you the plants I met in the Garden. Eccentric Japanese scholars have accumulated a strange list of world-wide plants. In my opinion, compared with the collection at the Kew, Koishikawa of 16ha with 4000 species of living plants (and 800 thousand specimens) are more “Otaku.” Yeah, 121ha of the Kew is larger, but … Please stay tuned. 😊 Oh, I must add this. U of TYO has another botanical garden open to the public in Nikko 日光, but they are closed during winter. The U also has several research forests mainly in Kanto Region, but they are accessible only with permission.

When we visited there, the plum garden was in full bloom.

Koishikawa Botanical Garden
Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo
3-7-1 Hakusan, Bunkyo-ku

Tokyo 112-0001