Ueno Park

(Above:) The Bird's-eye View of the Tokyo Taisho Exposition, Uyeno Park, Tokyo. A 1914 aerial view of Ueno Park in springtime at the first exposition of Japan's new Emperor, Taisho [Large justice], two years after the death of Emperor Meiji. The exhibition halls ring Shinobazu Pond; the thousands of cherry trees the park was known for envelop Ueno Park's museums, temples and sporting grounds. Ueno Station can been in the lower right. Above the horizon floats a dirigible, the only practical lighter-than-air sightseeing craft available at the time.

Most famous today for its acres of springtime cherry blossoms, Ueno-koen [Upper field park] continues to bridge both feudal Edo with modern Tokyo. In the centuries previous to the Restoration, Ueno was a temple ground upon which were found several significant shrines and other religious edifices. The most notable, Toshogu Shrine, memorializes the first Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and is a present-day reminder that Ueno was also the scene of the final stand by Tokugawa loyalists, the Shogotai [Shogun's army], against the restoration of Imperial rule in 1868.

Saigo Takamori, the general who marshalled Imperial troops against the Shogotai, is also memorialized, with some irony, at Ueno Park. A decade after the Restoration, it was Saigo who would lead an unsuccessful insurrection -- the Satsuma Rebellion -- against the very same Imperial government he had previously championed. The revolt by Saigo was raised to protest what he viewed as Japan's too-rapid rush toward Westernization including the demotion of samurai [Servant warrior] to a lower social status and their eventual elimination altogether as the military class in favor of a conscripted army. A populist figure in modern Japanese history, the statue of Saigo, commissioned by the Meiji government and cast in 1893, remains on the park grounds today. The Meiji government chose to clothe him as a commoner, not as a military figure, a decision that irked his wife and family to no end.

The original plan by the Meiji reformers had been to build a hospital atop the Ueno Hill battleground. Instead, it was recommended (by Dutch consultant Dr. A.F. Baudwin) that Ueno would become one of Tokyo's first true public parks; a park of cultural enlightenment designed along the European model of wide, tree-draped paths, grass-covered gathering areas and public recreation grounds. Thus, after the last of the post-Restoration rebellions were put down, Ueno Park became home to the National Museum (1882), the Zoological Garden (1882), the Imperial Museum (1909), and the forerunner of the National Diet Library, the Tokyo Library (1885). Restaurants, tea houses, and a baseball field would also eventually find room within the park grounds among its thousands of cherry trees.

Adding to the area's intellectual character was nearby Tokyo Imperial University, moved from Kanda to Hongo, adjacent to the park, in the 1880's. A hospital, too, would eventually fulfill the first wishes of the Meiji government when Tokyo University Hospital was also sited west of the park in 1886. Ueno Park was the host site for several industrial expositions during the Meiji and early Taisho periods, including the 1907 Meiji Exposition.

Ueno Park still retains its religious significance, too, in the modern age. Kaneiji temple, burned during the fighting on Ueno Hill in 1868, rebuilt but destroyed again during the 1945 firebombings and rebuilt yet again in the postwar period, is another piece connecting the past with the present at Ueno Park. Kaneiji served as the personal Tokugawa temple and several of Ieyasu's successors are entombed on its grounds. The main Tokugawa family Shinto worship place, Toshogu, and its nearby peony garden, is also located within the park. The demure Benten temple, built on an island in Shinobazu pond, was reachable by a long, stone causeway -- since demolished -- stretching across the water.

The remains of the Ueno Daibutsu [Large Buddha], cast of bronze in 1660, are on display atop a flight of stone steps beneath surrounding cherry and juniper trees. Damaged during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, the Ueno Daibutsu would suffer a final, demeaning and sacrilegious fate two decades later during the Pacific War when all bronze but its face was melted down for use in the war effort.