Kamonyama Park () 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 ...

in Nishi-ku,

Yokohama City is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kana ...

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 ...

. Located on a hill overlooking

Minato Mirai 21 , often known as simply Minato Mirai and abbreviated as MM, is the central business district of Yokohama, Japan. Initially developed in the 1980s, Minato Mirai 21 was designed as a large master-planned development and new urban center planned to co ...

, a

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...

of Naosuke Ii, who played key role in the opening of Yokohama Port in 1859, stands in the park. It is also a famous place for

cherry blossoms A cherry blossom, also known as Japanese cherry or sakura, is a flower of many trees of genus ''Prunus'' or ''Prunus'' subg. ''Cerasus''. They are common species in East Asia, including China, Korea and especially in Japan. They generall ...

in spring.Kamonyama Park (Yokohama Minatomirai Official Site)
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History

Until 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 ...

, it was simply a hill overlooking the sea, and was called Fudoyama. In the early

Meiji era 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 b ...

, as the official residences of the foreign railway engineers, such as Edmund Morel, who was involved in the opening of Japan's first railway between

Shimbashi Station is a major interchange railway station in Tokyo's Minato Ward, located centrally and a 10-minute walk from the Ginza shopping district, directly south of Tokyo station. Station layout JR East The JR East station consists of three surface plat ...

(now

Shiodome Freight Terminal was a freight terminal of the Japanese National Railways (JNR) in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The freight terminal was built on the site of the original which served as the first railway terminal of Tokyo between 1872 and 1914. History Shimbashi Stat ...

) and

Yokohama Station is a major interchange railway station in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. It is the busiest station in Kanagawa Prefecture and the fifth-busiest in the world as of 2013, serving 760 million passengers a year. Lines Yokohama Station is served by the ...

(currently Sakuragicho Station), were built there, this place was called Railway Hill. The hill was purchased by the

Hikone Domain was a '' fudai'' feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It was located in eastern Ōmi Province, in the Kansai region of central Honshu. The domain was centered at Hikone Castle, located in what is now the city of ...

in 1884, and became the property of the Ii family. In 1909, a statue of Naosuke Ii was erected to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Yokohama Port. At the unveiling ceremonies, Aritomo Yamagata, Hirobumi Ito, Masayoshi Matsukata, and

Kaoru Inoue Marquess Inoue Kaoru (井上馨, January 16, 1836 – September 1, 1915) was a Japanese politician and a prominent member of the Meiji oligarchy during the Meiji period of the Empire of Japan. As one of the senior statesmen (''Genrō'') in Ja ...

were all absent, as they were against the memorandum of the statue's purpose, with Ii as the person who opened the country. After that, it came to be called Kamonyama from "Kamon-no-kami", which was Naosuke Ii's official position in the

Edo shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedi ...

government. In 1914, the hill was donated to

by the Ii family and was renamed as Kamonyama Park. During World War II, the Ii's statue was removed by the government's metal recovery instructions, but in 1954, the statue was rebuilt by the city of Yokohama to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the opening of the country. About 200

cherry trees A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour ''Prunus cerasus''. The na ...

are planted in the park. In 1996, the Yokohama

Noh Theater is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today. Although the terms Noh and ' ...

was built inside of the park.

Transportation

Kamonyama Park is within ten minutes' walk from Sakuragicho Station.

References

External links

{{Coord, 35, 27, 11, N, 139, 37, 32, E, display=title
Kamonyama Park (City of Yokohama)
��in Japanese） Parks and gardens in Yokohama

History

Transportation

See also

References

External links