Hibiya Park (日比谷公園 ''Hibiya Kōen'') is a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are urban green space, green spaces set aside for recreation inside t ...

Chiyoda City is a special ward located in central Tokyo, Japan. It is known as Chiyoda City in English.Profile ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

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 ...

. It covers an area of 161,636.66 m² (40 acres) between the east gardens of the Imperial Palace to the north, the

Shinbashi , sometimes transliterated Shimbashi, is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Name Read literally, the characters in Shinbashi mean "new bridge". History The area was the site of a bridge built across the Shiodome River in 1604. The river was la ...

district to the southeast and the

Kasumigaseki Kasumigaseki (霞が関, 霞ヶ関 or 霞ケ関) is a district in Chiyoda Ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is the location of most of Japan's cabinet ministry offices. The name is often used as a metonym for the Japanese government bureaucracy, whi ...

government district to the west.

History

The land was occupied by the estates of the

Mōri clan The Mōri clan (毛利氏 ''Mōri-shi'') was a Japanese samurai clan descended from Ōe no Hiromoto. Ōe no Hiromoto was descended from the Fujiwara clan. The family's most illustrious member, Mōri Motonari, greatly expanded the clan's power ...

and

Nabeshima clan is a Japanese samurai kin group. Papinot, Jacques Edmond Joseph. (1906). ''Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie du Japon''; Papinot, (2003)"Nabeshima", ''Nobiliare du Japon'', p.38 retrieved 2013-5-5. History The clan controlled Saga Do ...

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 it was used for army maneuvers during the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

. It was converted to a park and opened to the public on June 1, 1903. On September 5, 1905, the park was the origin of the Hibiya riots, a major citywide riot that erupted in protest of the

Treaty of Portsmouth A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal perso ...

which ended the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

(1904−1905). The riots lasted two days resulting in seventeen people being killed and 331 arrested, as well a large amount of property damage. The riots were against the terms of the treaty, which were lenient to Russia, but also against bureaucrats who refused accept the will of the people on foreign policy. The park is famous for the Shisei Kaikan (市政会館), a brick building built in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style in 1929, which once housed the

Domei Tsushin Domei is the name of: * Dōmei Tsushin, former news agency in the Empire of Japan * Japanese Confederation of Labour The Japanese Confederation of Labour (Domei; ja, 全日本労働総同盟) was a national trade union federation in Japan. The ...

state wire service and its postwar successors

Kyodo News is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 millio ...

and

Jiji Press is a news agency in Japan. History Jiji was formed in November 1945 following the breakup of Domei Tsushin, the government-controlled news service responsible for disseminating information prior to and during World War II. Jiji inherited Dom ...

. The park is also home to the "Risky Ginkgo," a

ginkgo ''Ginkgo'' is a genus of non-flowering seed plants. The scientific name is also used as the English name. The order to which it belongs, Ginkgoales, first appeared in the Permian, 270 million years ago, and is now the only living genus within ...

tree that is about 500 years old and almost cost the park's designer his job when he fought to save the tree in 1901. The park is also known for its

open-air concert A music festival is a community event with performances of singing and instrument playing that is often presented with a theme such as musical genre (e.g., rock, blues, folk, jazz, classical music), nationality, locality of musicians, or ho ...

venue,

Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall The is an outdoor theater in Tokyo, Japan's Hibiya Park. There are actually two concert halls; the smaller was erected during the Meiji era, and the larger was first built in the Taishō era. The larger venue is colloquially abbreviated to . No ...

(日比谷野外音楽堂), commonly known as Yaon (野音), as well as for its tennis courts (for which reservations are hotly contested because of their proximity to the financial and government districts). World War II took a toll on the park when almost all the trees and fencing was used for the war effort.

Surrounding buildings

* Attorneys' Hall (Japan Federation of Bar Associations headquarters) * Fukoku Seimei Building *

Imperial Hotel, Tokyo The is a hotel in Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda ward, Tokyo. It was created in the late 1880s at the request of the Japanese aristocracy to cater to the increasing number of Western visitors to Japan. The hotel site is located just south of the Impe ...

* Ministry of the Environment *

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare The is a cabinet level ministry of the Japanese government. It is commonly known as in Japan. The ministry provides services on health, labour and welfare. It was formed with the merger of the former Ministry of Health and Welfare or and the ...

Ministry of Justice A Ministry of Justice is a common type of government department that serves as a justice ministry. Lists of current ministries of justice Named "Ministry" * Ministry of Justice (Abkhazia) * Ministry of Justice (Afghanistan) * Ministry of Just ...

Mizuho Bank is the integrated retail and corporate banking unit of Mizuho Financial Group (; ), the third largest financial services company in Japan, with total assets of approximately $1.8 trillion in 2017. Mizuho is one of the three so-called Japanese ...

Building *

Nissay Theatre The is a theatre in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is located in the Nissay Hibiya Building, designed by the architect Togo Murano. It was completed in 1963 and opened with a performance by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Since then it has been used to sta ...

* NTT Hibiya Building *

Shinsei Bank is a leading diversified Japanese financial institution that provides a full range of financial products and services to both institutional and individual customers. It is owned by SBI Group and headquartered in Chuo, Tokyo. History SBI Shinsei ...

Building *

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is a Japanese multinational banking and financial services institution headquartered in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and ser ...

Building

Education

operates public elementary and junior high schools. Chiyoda Elementary School (千代田小学校) is the zoned elementary of Hibiya Park. There is a freedom of choice system for junior high schools in Chiyoda Ward, and so there are no specific junior high school zones.

Gallery

File:Hibiya Park02s3872.jpg, Hibiya Park Lake and Wisteria Grove File:Municipal Research Building (2018-05-04) 02.jpg, ''Shisei Kaikan'', former home of Japan's newswires File:Stone money at Hibiya Park in Tokyo.JPG, Rai stone in Hibiya Park File:Hibiya Ongaku-Do Meiji Era.jpg, Ongaku-do, Hibiya Park, Tokyo, 1909 File:Hibiya Park in autumn 2.jpg, autumn File:Hibiya Park - various - April 13 2019 sunny day.jpeg,

File:The Pelican Fountain in Hibiya Park, Tokyo.jpg, The Pelican Fountain

References

External links

Tokyo Parks Association official webpage
{{Authority control Chiyoda, Tokyo Parks and gardens in Tokyo