Ritsurin Garden — historic garden
Leela Soden · CC BY-SA 3.0

Ritsurin Garden

  • 1 min read
  • 34.330° N 134.044° E

Interesting facts

  • The name Ritsurin means 'chestnut grove', although it is sculpted pines, not chestnuts, that dominate the garden today.
  • The Neagari Goyomatsu began as a bonsai given by shogun Tokugawa Ienari in 1833; planted out, it grew to about eight metres.
  • That former bonsai is the only Japanese white pine among the roughly 1,400 pines growing in the garden.
  • The Tsurukamematsu pine is trained to look like a crane standing on a turtle, whose shell is a mound of more than 100 stones.
  • The interlocking black pines of the Hakomatsu, the 'box pine', have been shaped by the garden's gardeners for more than 300 years.
  • In 1922 the future King Edward VIII, then Prince of Wales, planted a pine in the garden during his visit to Japan.
  • Ritsurin was named a Special Place of Scenic Beauty in 1953, the highest national rank a Japanese garden can receive.
  • The garden keeps a moat once used by the Takamatsu lords for hunting wild ducks.
  • Besides its pines, Ritsurin has about 320 cherry trees, which bloom from late March into early April.

Why it is worth it

Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu is the largest of Japan's daimyo gardens, and among the most refined: some 75 hectares of stroll garden laid out at the foot of Mount Shiun, whose wooded slope was taken into the design as a living backdrop. Six ponds and thirteen artificial hills are arranged so that the view recomposes itself at every bend of the path, and the Japanese saying applied to it is that each step brings a new scene. The garden is a national Special Place of Scenic Beauty and holds three stars in the Michelin Green Guide to Japan.

It took more than a century to make. The feudal lord Ikoma Takatoshi began it around 1625, and when the Matsudaira family took over the Takamatsu domain they continued the work, generation after generation, until the fifth Matsudaira lord, Yoritaka, completed it in 1745. After the Meiji Restoration the government took it over, and on 16 March 1875 it opened to the public.

What sets Ritsurin apart is its pines. Around 1,400 trees grow in the garden, about a thousand of them shaped by hand, and the most remarkable is the Hakomatsu, a planting of black pines whose branches, twigs and needles are trimmed by hand into an elaborate, compact form. The Kikugetsu-tei, the "scooping the moon" teahouse from around 1640, stands in the southern part of the garden, the arched Engetsu-kyō bridge doubles itself in the still water, and the artificial hills of Hiraiho and Fuyō-hō lift the paths above the water so that ponds, islands and the green wall of the mountain come together in one picture.

Getting there

Ritsurin Garden is in Takamatsu, less than 1 km from the city centre, and around 13 km from Takamatsu Airport (TAK). The nearest stations are Kotoden Ritsurin-Kōen Station and JR Ritsurin-Kōen-Kitaguchi Station; local buses also stop at the garden.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Japan 122The Most Beautiful Historic Gardens in Japan 5The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Japan 18The Most Beautiful Historic Gardens 31The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

Ritsurin Garden is a large, historic garden in Takamatsu, Japan. It was completed in 1745 as a private strolling garden and villa for the local feudal lords, and opened to the public in 1875. Ritsurin is one of the largest strolling gardens in Japan, and a major tourist attraction for Kagawa Prefecture.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

34.32958, 134.04389per Wikidata