is a Japanese dry landscape garden and nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty in the city of Hirakawa,

Aomori Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan in the Tōhoku region. The prefecture's capital, largest city, and namesake is the city of Aomori. Aomori is the northernmost prefecture on Japan's main island, Honshu, and is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the east, ...

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 ...

Overview

The garden was laid out in the

Genroku was a after Jōkyō and before Hōei. The Genroku period spanned the years from the ninth month of 1688 to the third month of 1704. The reigning emperor was .Titsingh, Isaac. (1834). ''Annales des empereurs du japon'', p. 415. The period was ...

era of 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 ...

(1668-1703) at the residence of the Seitō family, to commemorate the visit of a court noble, Fujiwara Tadanaga, to this location to plant a ''keyaki'' tree. The Seitō family claimed descent from Seitō Morihide, a retainer of

Hōjō Tokiyori Hōjō Tokiyori (, June 29, 1227 – December 24, 1263) was the fifth shikken (regent) of the Kamakura shogunate in Japan. Early life He was born to warrior monk Hōjō Tokiuji and a daughter of Adachi Kagemori. Rule Tokiyori became shikken f ...

in the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

. According to legend, Hōjō Tokiyori had an affair with a lady-in-waiting named Karaito Gozen. This incurred the wrath of his wife, and fearing for Karaito Gozen's safety, he entrusted her to Seitō Morihide with orders to hide her in a distant location with promises that they would eventually be reunited. Seitō Morihide took her to distant Tsuruga by sea, to a village in what is now

Fujisaki, Aomori is a town in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 14,921 in 6068 households, and a population density of 400 persons per km². The total area of the town is . Geography Fujisaki occupies the flatlands within Minam ...

. However, after years went by, Karaito Gozen feared that Hōjō Tokiyori had a change of heart and she committed suicide by throwing herself in a pond. Unable to face Tokiyori, Seitō Morihide decided to remain in Tsugaru. His descendants became great landholders, and Fujiwara Tadanaga was visiting sites connected with this legend. The garden covers an area of . The original ''keyaki'' tree no longer exists, and the garden was extensively renovated in the late Edo period; however, it can be considered a prototype of the ''Oishi Bugaku Ryu'' style of Japanese gardens, as later seen at the nearby

Seibi-en is a Japanese landscape garden and nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty in the city of Hirakawa, Aomori Prefecture, Japan. Overview The garden was laid out between 1902 and 1911 by the 24th generation head of the Seitō family, Seit ...

. The garden is approximately a 10 minute walk from

Tsugaru-Onoe Station is a railway station on the Kōnan Railway Kōnan Line in Hirakawa, Aomori, Japan, operated by the private railway operator Kōnan Railway Company. Lines Tsugaru-Onoe Station is served by the Kōnan Railway Kōnan Line, and lies 11.1 kilometer ...

on the

Kōnan Railway Konan may refer to: * Conan (disambiguation), a name spelt "Konan" in the Breton language * ''Kɔnan'', a male given name in a number of Akan cultures, chiefly the Baoulé people, for whom it is typically given to any male born on a Wednesday (''m ...

References

External links

Hirakawa Tourism homepage

{{in lang, ja Gardens in Aomori Prefecture Hirakawa, Aomori Places of Scenic Beauty

Overview

See also

References

External links