Day 9: Himeji (Koko-en 好古園)

Koko-en (好古園) is a Japanese garden located next to Himeji Castle.

This strolling-landscape-type Japanese garden was built to commemorate Himeji City’s 100th anniversary. It features ponds and springs against the backdrop of Himeji Castle. Actually, the garden consists of 9 separate Japanese traditional gardens. The area used to be the former site of a Himeji Lord’s Residence and his men’s samurai houses. The garden covers an area of 3.5 hectares.

The 9 gardens featured in Koko-en are:

• The garden of the Lord’s residence, the biggest garden, including a pond with carp, a roofed corridor, and the Cho-on-sai guest house
• garden of seedlings, containing plants grown during the Edo era
• tea ceremony garden with Soujo-an tea house
• flatly landscaped garden, a country style garden
• garden of summer trees, with a view of Himeji Castle
• the garden of pine trees
• garden of flowers, with flowers popular during the Edo period
• the garden with a hill and pond, with a tortoise shaped rock in the pond and a Japanese crane shaped stone slab
• garden of bamboo.

The garden’s passage-ways are traditional mud walls, called “Tsuiji-bei.” The walls have roof-tiles. Flowing streams, waterfalls and ponds join up and connect the distinct gardens.

In addition, there are also beautiful wooden gates like:

• “Yashiki-mon” (gate to “The Lord’s Residence”)
• “Nagaya-mon”, a traditional style gate with two guard-rooms.

The official website has an English section.

We really enjoyed visiting the garden. I didn’t realise at the time the garden is relatively young. We thought the garden must be centuries old. The garden has been used as a location for a number of Japanese films.