Do you agree that the Daimyo Garden, a traditional Japanese garden created by samurai, is similar to contemporary theme parks such as Tokyo Disneyland? Yes, I totally agree!! Let’s talk about it!
First, the Daimyo Garden generally has three primary purposes: relaxation and pastime, private meetings, and entertainment. As I wrote in my previous post, the Daimyo Gardens were designed and built so visitors could enjoy the scenery along the pond while walking around it. The owner of the garden or the samurai lords must have released the stress or fatigue from his duties while walking in the garden or just enjoyed creating his preferred style of the garden as his hobby and pastime.
Secondly, sometimes, the owner used the garden setups, such as a tea ceremony house and footpath, to talk secretly with other samurai officers or merchandisers about political issues or business negotiations. It was suitable to keep others away to prevent them from eavesdropping. They must have pretended to walk and admire the garden views and rest at a tea house en route. After they enjoyed a bowl of Japanese tea, they might have walked around the pond again and exchanged a secret talk. It sounds interesting because, generally, secret talk happens behind closed doors, but in the samurai society, it is conducted in the open air. I guess it is because the Japanese house structures are built with wood and paper materials, not stones and glass, which allows anyone to listen to their conversations easily.
Now comes the main topic of this post: entertainment in the Daimyo Garden.
Quite often, the garden owner held parties and events for the shogun and his families. Inviting the shoguns to his house was extremely honored, and the owner organized entertainment events to take care of them. That’s why the Daimyo Gardens have entertainment aspects, and many exciting episodes about the parties and events are left.
According to a diary of a samurai who was invited to the garden event, he found many stalls that served sake (Japanese liquor brewed from rice), gorgeous meals, etc., and a playground for children. Another document said that a Shogun’s wife came with tens of her maids, and they enjoyed fishing at the pond. Significantly, the wife was so absorbed that she did not want to leave for her house, the Edo castle. It was reportedly not a coincidence, but the host well set it up. The host ordered his staff to put a large number of fish into the pond in advance so that everybody was happy with a good fishing record. It’s a typical and traditional strategy like the English proverb, “He that would the daughter win, must with the mother first begin.” A Japanese proverb also says, “Shoot the horse first if you want to kill the opponent on a horse.”
The eating and drinking at the stalls, watching the dance, enjoying the tea ceremony, and being excited about the fishing experience all happened along the pond and were served well by the host and his staff. That’s why I want to describe The Daimyo Garden as a samurai entertainment theme park. It was designed similarly to Tokyo Disneyland, which has many attractions around the iconic castle in the center of the park. The Daimyo Garden also has a main pond in its center, allowing visitors or guests to enjoy many events while walking along the pond. You can see their similarity in the following photos.
You may realize that the Daimyo Garden has a spacious lawn area. It sometimes served as a performance stage where samurais showed their skills, such as horse-riding, shooting arrows, etc., or, on other days, it turned out to be the festival field for a party to thank their staff for their service.
Kyu Shiba Rikyu Garden still maintains the tradition of samurai martial arts since it has the Kyudo-Jo, a training hall for the Japanese art of archery. Everybody uses it with advanced reservation. One day, when I visited the garden, I saw a man practicing Japanese archery in a very sacred atmosphere, which made me imagine that samurais contested their archery skills to appeal to the lord.
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