is a

medicinal herb Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection ag ...

garden in the city of

Aizuwakamatsu is a city in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 118,159 in 50,365 households, and a population density of 310 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Geography Aizuwakamatsu is located in the west ...

Fukushima Prefecture Fukushima Prefecture (; ja, 福島県, Fukushima-ken, ) is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,810,286 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miya ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The garden was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty by the Japanese government in 1932. It is also known as the .

History

The garden was first established in the 1380s. In the 1430s Ashina Morihisa, the 10th feudal lord of the

Ashina clan Ashina may refer to: *Ashina tribe, a ruling dynasty of the Turkic Khaganate *Ashina clan (Japan), one of the Japanese clans *Ashina District, Hiroshima, a former Japanese district *Empress Ashina (551–582), empress of the Chinese/Xianbei dynasty ...

, believing it to be a sacred place, kept the garden as a

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

. In 1670,

Hoshina Masatsune was the 2nd ''daimyō'' of Aizu Domain in Mutsu Province, Japan (modern-day Fukushima Prefecture). His courtesy title was '' Chikuzen-no-kami'' and ''Jijū'', and his Court rank was Senior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade. Biography Masatsune was the ...

, the second ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' of the

Aizu Domain was a domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1601 to 1871.Ravina, Mark. (1998) ''Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan,'' p. 222 The Aizu Domain was based at Tsuruga Castle in Mutsu Province, the core of the ...

, cultivated various herbs in the garden, notably Korean ginseng. Private citizens were encouraged to grow herbs as well, so the garden became known as ''Oyakuen'', or "medicinal herb garden". Today there are about 400 kinds of medicinal herbs and trees cultivated in and around the garden. Meguro Jotei, a landscape gardener during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

and disciple of

Kobori Enshū was a notable Japanese artist and aristocrat in the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Biography His personal name was Masakazu (政一). In 1604, he received as inheritance a 12,000-''koku'' fief in Ōmi Province at Komuro, present Nagahama, Shiga. ...

, designed the current layout of the garden to show nature in miniature, which is typical of a

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

. The garden pond is named ''Shinji no Ike'' and is shaped like the ''

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

'' character for "heart" (心). The rectangular garden has a perimeter of about 540 m and an area of about 1.7 ha.Okyakuen brochure

Chōyōkaku

The Chōyōkaku at Oyaku-en The Chōyōkaku (重陽閣) was built on the ninth of September, a date known as ''chōyō'' in the

Japanese calendar Japanese calendar types have included a range of official and unofficial systems. At present, Japan uses the Gregorian calendar together with year designations stating the year of the reign of the current Emperor. The written form starts with t ...

. In 1928,

Princess Chichibu was a member of the Imperial House of Japan, Japanese Imperial Family and the wife of Yasuhito, Prince Chichibu, Prince Chichibu, the second son of Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei. Setsuko was a sister-in-law of Hirohito, Emperor Shōwa and a ...

stayed at Chōyōkaku while visiting the garden. In 1973 the building was moved to its current location.

Ochayagoten

The Ochayagoten (御茶屋御殿) dates from the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

. It was built in the Izumidono style. Each room has at least four-and-a-half tatami mats. The building was used when lords, superior officials, merchants or general managers of the clan were invited to Aizu.

Rakujutei

The Rakujutei at Oyaku-en The Rakujutei (楽寿亭) is a

tea ceremony An East Asian tea ceremony, or ''Chádào'' (), or ''Dado'' ( ko, 다도 (茶道)), is a ceremonially ritualized form of making tea (茶 ''cha'') practiced in East Asia by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. The tea ceremony (), literally transla ...

cottage built on ''Naka shima'' or "Middle Island". It has an alcove with a rail and

thatched Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

roof. Feudal lords and the executives of the clan would enjoy tea ceremony here.

References

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Notes