Hibiya Park

(Above:) Hibiya-park, Tokyo. Tokyo's first Western-style public park, with a Japanese flair, occupied 50-acres of former marching ground to the east of Kasumigaseki's government district.

Hibiya-koen [Sun match valley park] opened on June 1, 1903. Said to be Japan's first Western-style park, and viewed as Tokyo's first proper public park, Hibiya Park was meticulously planned by the national government as yet another display of Japan's modernization after 1868.

The park grounds were developed from land originally owned by feudal daimyo, the Tokugawa-era provincial lords, whose grand estates occupied the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Edo castle. After the Restoration, the estates were appropriated by the Meiji government, the residences leveled, and the grounds turned over for use by the Imperial army as drill grounds. City planners had drawn up plans to convert the army land into the capital's ministerial and bureaucratic district but were thwarted by the underlying soft subsoil. (The area had once been an inlet of Tokyo Bay but was reclaimed in the 17th century with debris from the Kanda canal project.) The government construction project was then moved slightly west from Hibiya to more solid ground at Kasumigaseki.