Beautiful Shukkeien, Hiroshima

I needed to write something more positive after writing about the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, if only to record that it is a nice city, and that there are lots of good things to do here that don’t mess with our minds so much. I didn’t know about Shukkeien Garden until I was on a free bus that happened to stop there, so the next time I went on the bus I decided to visit. Funny, really: I’ve never been a gardener, but I enjoy other people’s gardens!

I’m slightly embarrassed to be surprised that some things in Japan are very old, too. In Australia, we think of things that happened early in the twentieth century as ‘old’, but here (as in Europe and elsewhere with recorded histories), old means hundreds of years – if not thousands. Anyway, this garden was first constructed around 1620, some 400 years ago. It was a ‘strolling’ garden: you strolled around it, as I did on my visit. But it was constructed to shrink scenery, so that it provides a sort of miniaturised landscape (apparently of the famous West lake in Guangzhou, which Marian and I had the pleasure of visiting – and walking around – some years ago.)

I was so impressed with my stroll that I used the above photo on my FaceBook home page, thinking it was about time I changed the scene.

Like most other things in Hiroshima, the garden was effectively destroyed with the atomic bomb in 1945, and has been rebuilt faithfully since then. Here’s an old and new picture that shows how effectively that’s been done (click on the images for a closer look):

In fact, it’s still undergoing renovation – I guess gardening is a relentless sort of activity. But I was amused by the distinctively polite Japanese apology (including a bow) for the work in progress on a small bridge:

The park is beautiful and is beautifully maintained so that I thoroughly enjoyed strolling around it, despite the heat. It was one of those places where you would get a nice enough postcard just by pointing your camera anywhere and keeping it horizontal. Here are a few randomly chosen examples (you can click on the photos to see them in full):

I’m not sure how they get the small trees to look like they are big trees seen from a distance (the Bonsai effect, I guess), but it all looked lovely. The distinctive features of Japanese gardens seems to me to be the green, the rocks and the water, although that is likely to be because I have mostly visited Japan in the summer time. (The colours of changing leaves in autumn look lovely and of course the spring flowers – such as cherry blossoms – are rightly famous, while trees draped in winter snows look different again).

Here are a few more pictures of similar kinds:

In my wandering around the (comparatively small) garden, I noticed some tea-houses and one of them included a marriage ceremony – or at least the photographs of it! Of course the bride and groom were happy to be photographed by a wandering ancient tourist. I loved the traditional costumes, although did not envy them wearing them in the heat. (It was at least 35 degrees C at that stage).

Not normally one for selfies, I succumbed to a request by the groom to be photographed with him, despite my slightly dishevelled appearance!

I reciprocated by taking his photo on an attractive bridge nearby!

I felt a little sorry for the bride, who must have been drained in perspiration in her beautiful costume, despite her attendants working on keeping her cool, but she bravely was happy to be photographed again.

It’s a beautiful little garden, and I was pleased that I decided to tarry a while there, although the phrase, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” was buzzing around my head for much of the time. I was especially pleased to do so after the unavoidable melancholy of the graphic reminders of the city’s past.

I have also made a mental note to try to find  a way to return to Japan in different seasons. They have all four seasons here (unlike Australia, where many of us get at best two different seasons), and I’d love to stroll around the same gardens in all four seasons, but still prefer them to be other people’s gardens.