A perfect Japanese garden doesn't appear overnight. They emerge slowly, nurtured over generations to become a stylised embodiment of nature in a perfect state, looking natural but by no means wild. For Kenrokuen Garden, in the Japanese city Kanazawa, work began in the early 1600s, at the start of the nation's Edo period, and has continued in one form or another until the present day, with the garden first opening to the public in 1874.
Located in Ishikawa Prefecture on the coast of Japan’s main island, Kanazawa and its famous garden are revelling in their newly boosted popularity as a destination. The city of about 500,000 people is the latest addition to the country’s Shinkansen network, the superfast trains that have made Japan’s railways famous for speed and relentless efficiency. Despite being on the other side of the country from Tokyo, the new connection puts it within easy reach of the capital, now a few hours away. The fame of the garden in this city is measured and surprisingly specific.
“It is the third-best garden in Japan,” explains the professional guide Masa Hattori, reiterating a point made by others and in much of the writing about the place (the gardens that make up the rest of the top three are Korakuen in Okayama and Kairakuen in Mito). “It’s important because it manages to have all of the attributes a garden needs to be considered an ideal example.”
The garden’s name loosely translates to “garden which combines six characteristics”, although exactly what these characteristics are vary a little depending on whom you talk to. The garden’s guardians, who look after this cultural property of national significance, probably sum it up best. For starters, an ideal garden needs to combine spaciousness with seclusion.
Generously proportioned, especially by Japanese standards, the garden exhibits plenty of spaciousness, with enough room for more than 8,500 trees, two sizeable ponds and a long stream that winds its way around the site. Kenrokuen is very specifically designed as a garden to walk around and explore, rather than just look at from a fixed ideal viewpoint, as some Japanese gardens are designed to be seen. As such, it has wide walkways that did a good job of dispersing the substantial public-holiday crowds of late summer.
Even with the people-packed days of September’s Silver Week – where Japanese law sensibly dictated that two public holidays a day apart be linked by making the middle day a holiday, too – there was plenty of seclusion to be found. Paths are plentiful, but straight lines are few, creating numerous nooks and crannies in carefully shaded spots, where there’s room to enjoy the view across a pond, or through a stand of trees, without the crowd pushing up against you.
Artifice and antiquity are essential elements, too. While the garden is intended to have the look of a natural environment, one of which has simply evolved, it’s carefully constructed to appear that way. Four-hundred years in the making gives it the sense of age and almost permanence that mark out a great garden. The garden also lays claim to what some believe to be Japan’s oldest fountain, which throws water upwards powered by natural pressure alone.
Panoramas and water are the final two elements of the ideal garden, and Kenrokuen has them in abundance, with perfectly constructed scenes never far away. As paths are followed, there’s a pattern of being in enclosed narrow spaces, and seeing them open to a vista of a pond, bridge or stone lantern. Key to the art of using them well is bringing in views of the surroundings, outside the confines of the garden itself. For example, from atop Sazaeyama (Shellfish Hill) at the garden’s heart, as visitors who’ve made the climb look out over Kasum-ig-iake Pond to Kotojitoro Lantern – every feature has a name – the garden borrows a little grandeur from the hills in the distance of Kanazawa, while the urban landscape of the city streets remain hidden from view in the valleys. It’s a clever trick that the garden’s design plays again and again, as paths steer visitors to shaded viewing spots equipped with unforgiving stone benches.
The sense that your surroundings are man-made is never far away, though. From the shin-high post and bamboo-rail fences that surround every piece of greenery and make it clear that footprints aren’t part of the plan, to the perfectly placed rocks that give a stream its gurgle and a place to cross, everything has a purpose. A cohort of gardeners work furiously to keep things in order, busiest day of the year or not. Hidden beneath “sugegasa” – conical straw hats – with faces shielded from the sun, their work is done carefully and by hand: the soft, green ground covering is being trimmed, tiny sickles snicking away at resisting blades of greenery.
Large trees have also been shaped to a specific purpose. Some are held in place above a path by sturdy T-bar supports, letting them reach over and shade a path. Others have been trained to spread their branches beyond what their weight would allow, with several posts under each limb holding them up and allowing them to reach farther. Larger trees have been trained over many decades to take on the forms of life-size bonsai, their branches twisted and turned to present a perfectly level row of green foliage offset by dark shades of bark.
Bridges are dotted around the garden, and give visitors a chance for a view from the relative open of the stream. Each one is different, from Gankou-bashi, or Flying Geese Bridge, which is made of 11 red Tomuro stones laid out to look like geese flying in formation, to the curve of the Komon Bridge, carved from a single piece of the blue Tomuro stone; or the more conventional bow of Hanami-bashi, or the Flower-Viewing Bridge, which lives up to its quite literal name.
While the scale of Kenrokuen can give the impression of a park, the detail in every aspect of the garden demonstrates that nothing has been left to chance and that you’re strolling around a carefully constructed scene, not simply a place where nature has been pared back. It has taken dedication, perseverance and vision to reach this point, and it’s a living work of art that continues to evolve.
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The garden is open throughout the year, with opening times changing with the seasons (March 1 to October 15, 7am to 6pm; October 16 to February 29, 8am to 5pm). The garden also has evening opening hours during festivals. The entry fee is 310 Japanese yen (Dh9).
Green Spaces is a series that features notable gardens and public spaces from around the world.
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