Kōraku-en

Interesting facts

In 1956 the Chinese writer and statesman Guo Moruo, who had once studied in Okayama, presented the garden with a pair of red-crowned cranes, and cranes are still kept here.

The garden first included rice paddies and vegetable fields because Ikeda Tsunamasa loved rural scenery; in 1771 a cash-strapped successor had them turned into lawn.

Construction was directed by the retainer Tsuda Nagatada, who had also dug the Hyakken River floodway that saved the domain from ruinous floods and freed money for the garden.

The floods that plagued Okayama began after 1597, when the river was bent around the castle to serve as a moat.

Under shogunate scrutiny the lords did not receive outside guests here; the first recorded visit was in 1830, when Ikeda Narutoshi hosted his father, the lord of Satsuma.

When the Ikeda family offered the garden to the prefecture, the assembly at first voted against it before agreeing in 1883 to buy it for 12,500 yen.

In 1930 the garden served as imperial headquarters and lodging for Emperor Shōwa during army manoeuvres held in the prefecture.

During the Second World War the lawns were dug up to grow potatoes, and after 1945 occupation troops were quartered here and built a 25-metre swimming pool.

The Ryūten rest house was built with a water channel flowing through the inside of the building.

The Tsurunarikan hall was moved here in 1949 from the former residence of the Kikkawa family in Iwakuni.

Why it is worth it

Kōraku-en spreads its lawns, ponds and pine-covered hillocks across an island in the Asahi River, with the black walls of Okayama Castle rising just beyond. It is one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan, alongside Kenroku-en in Kanazawa and Kairaku-en in Mito, and one of the finest surviving examples of a stroll garden designed for a feudal lord.

Ikeda Tsunamasa, daimyo of Okayama, ordered its construction in 1687, and the garden was completed in 1700. It was first called Kōen, the "later garden", because it was laid out after the castle; in 1871 it received its present name, which echoes a Confucian maxim that a ruler should worry before his people and take his pleasure after them. The design follows the kaiyū or promenade style: a path winds around the central Sawa-no-ike pond with its three islands and along a stream about 640 metres long, revealing a new view at every turn — tea houses, open lawns, hills, bridges and the castle itself borrowed into the scenery.

The garden covers about 13 hectares, with an unusually generous 18,500 square metres of lawn. In 1884 it passed to Okayama Prefecture and opened to the public. It was badly damaged in a flood in 1934 and again by bombing in 1945, and was restored using Edo-period paintings and plans as a guide. In 1952 it was designated a Special Place of Scenic Beauty, Japan's highest protection for a landscape garden.

Okayama, a castle town on the Inland Sea coast of western Honshu, grew around the Ikeda domain, and the castle and garden still face each other across the river at its heart.

Getting there

Kōraku-en is in central Okayama, about 2 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Okayama Momotaro (OKJ), about 12 km away.

Kōraku-en

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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