Kenroku-en: the hidden innovative method beneath the beauty

Kenroku-en Garden is so beautiful, and has various countenance of changeable landscape sights and seasonal nature. Especially, on a fine morning after snowing during the previous night in winter, the maiden beauty of Kenroku-en is superficial. You can have a super experience in the white silent world, of listening to the sound of foot steps on the virgin snow while looking at beautiful scenes.

Kenroku-en has a lot of old pine trees with heavy branches. In winter each tree is guarded by a lot of ropes from the top of a long straight wooden pole called “Yuki-zuri” for the sake of preventing those branches from breaking by the weight of the snow. The aspect of the pine trees with Yuki-zuri, which has the harmony of nature with the artistic triangle, is wonderful.

Kenroku-en means the garden which has six characteristics, wide-scape, profound and quiet, artistic, old and elegant, water & spring and wide viewing from it. It is the garden of the “daimyo”, the lord of the samurai in a feudal region, and the strolling style garden. It is one of the three famous gardens of the daimyo, but I think Kenroku-en is the best because of its extremely various characteristics.


There is a reason for its various characteristics, which is the history of landscaping its garden and pursuing the beauty for two centuries.

First of all, the peace covered Japan for 250 years in the Edo period. I don’t know the situation in the European feudal period, in the case of the Japanese feudal period it was governed by the Tokugawa Bakufu, no war annoyed any clans. Then feudal lords of the samurai could put a lot of energy into other things besides military power.


Kenroku-en belonged to the Kaga Clan, which was the largest feudal clan of all and the second largest next to the Tokugawa Bakufu. Then the position of the Kaga Clan was particular rather than other clans by means of keeping a good relationship with the Tokugawa Bakufu and avoiding any confrontation with the Tokugawa Bakufu.


Then the Kaga Clan placed most importance on building cultures, and it was able to put a lot of energy into Kenroku-en.


Nowadays the management of Kenroku-en has been handed to Kanazawa municipal office, it keeps the beauty, so a lot of travelers can enjoy Kenroku-en. (Daisetsu Museum which was introduced before is near Kenroku-en).

The meaning of the strolling garden


Kenroku-en has the size of 11.7 square hectares and you can stroll through a lot of various photogenic scenery.


The type of strolling garden is the main core of The Japanese garden since the Heian period except for Zen gardens. Sento Imperial palace and The Katsura Imperial Villa which I wrote about previously have the strolling type as well. Ancient Japanese people had strolled in the hills and in the mountains. For ancient Japanese people the hills and the mountains were the places where deities dwelled, and they strolled there in order to receive the energy from the deities. I learned that the history of ancient Japan was different from the history of ancient Europe. Ancient European people thought that the forest was a place where the devil dwelled, so they never strolled in the forest and the mountains before modern times. The genes of ancient Japanese people made the strolling style garden, I think.

On the contrary, in my opinion, Kenroku-en has other elements under the unique aspect of the samurai. As evidenced by Kenroku-en having six characteristics, the scenes are changeable at each standing point while strolling through it. In a word, it is artistic strategy rather than natural. Artistic strategy has some intention to teach a strolling person something. It is to make a strolling person consider something at various view points, moreover to transform him to a transilient person (a jumping person).


The way of the samurai, “bushi-do”, gives direction of stepping up on three situations to the samurai, “shu-ha-ri”(the kanji characters above) in Japanese. The first situation “shu” is learning all things according to a teacher or a mentor. The second “ha” is the situation of destroying the thoughts and the way of the teacher. The third “ri” is the situation of leaving the thoughts and the way of the teacher and getting your own individual thoughts. It is the Japanese innovative method to create a new original style. In order to transit to an upper level a person has to get the method of transilient thinking. Shu-ha-ri is like the growth of butterflies. The first is the larva, the second is the pupa and the third is the adult. Then to transit between two situations is the emergency of complexity.


For the samurai, to stroll through the various and complex sight of the garden is to let the stroller learn the method of transilient thinking.


Kenroku-en is a very beautiful garden, but it is a garden with the way of the samurai which is hidden beneath its beauty.