Kenroku-en

Kenroku-en, beside the walls of Kanazawa Castle, is a stroll garden that took more than two centuries to reach its present form. It was the private garden of the Maeda, lords of the rich Kaga domain, and grew in stages: the Tatsumi water channel that still feeds its ponds was completed in 1632, the fifth lord Tsunanori laid out a lotus-pond garden on the slope in 1676, and after a fire in 1759 destroyed much of it, the eleventh lord Harunaga began rebuilding in 1774, with the twelfth and thirteenth lords giving it the shape it has today. It opened to the public on 7 May 1874.

The name was given in 1822 by Matsudaira Sadanobu, and means "garden of six attributes". It borrows a Chinese idea that a perfect landscape must unite six qualities that tend to cancel each other out: spaciousness and seclusion, artifice and antiquity, flowing water and wide views. The point of walking through Kenroku-en is to see how the Maeda gardeners reconciled them, opening broad lawns and pond views in one place and closing them into shaded paths a few steps further on, with glimpses out over the city towards the mountains and the Sea of Japan.

The garden covers more than eleven hectares, with some 8,750 trees of 183 species. Its emblem stands at the edge of Kasumi-ga-ike, the largest pond: the Kotoji-tōrō, a stone lantern on two legs, named for its resemblance to the bridge that holds up the strings of a koto. Elsewhere a small fountain driven purely by natural water pressure is counted the oldest in Japan. The Yugao-tei teahouse, from 1774, is the oldest building in the garden, and a path of eleven red stones laid in a staggered line, the Flying Geese Bridge, crosses the water like a skein of birds.

Kenroku-en is one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan, with Kairaku-en in Mito and Kōraku-en in Okayama, and has been a Special Place of Scenic Beauty since 1985. It changes completely with the seasons, but winter gives it its most famous image: the yukitsuri, cones of ropes strung radially from a tall pole to the branches of the old pines, so that the heavy, wet snow of the Sea of Japan coast does not break them. Work begins each year on 1 November with the Karasaki pine, whose spreading limbs take some 800 ropes hung from five poles.

Getting there

Kenroku-en lies in the centre of Kanazawa, next to Kanazawa Castle Park. Frequent buses run from the east exit of Kanazawa Station to the Kenrokuen-shita stop in about 15 minutes, a short walk from the garden. The nearest airport is Komatsu (KMQ), about 30 km away.