History

The history of Shinjuku Gyoen dates back to 1590, when Tokugawa Ieyasu, who established the Edo shogunate, moved to Edo (present-day Tokyo) and granted land in the Shinjuku area to his vassal, Kiyonari Naito. It is a rather interesting story: from the present site of Shinjuku Gyoen, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered Kiyonari to ride a horse as far as possible until the animal could run no more. Kiyonari was given the vast land, extending in the east to Yotsuya, the west to Yoyogi, the south to Sendagaya, and the north to Okubo.

About 100 years later, Naito Kiyokazu, the seventh-generation head of the Naito family, became the feudal lord of the Shinshu Takato Domain (present-day Nagano). He was granted a primary residence in Kanda Ogawamachi and established his suburban residence in the Yotsuya area. Later, the Edo shogunate reclaimed part of the land to develop a new post town and relay station on the Koshu Kaido road, which came to be called Naito Shinjuku. Like most Edo secondary residences, the Naito family suburban residence had a garden. It was used as the retirement dwelling of the previous head of the family and as a retreat for the feudal lord. Completed in 1772 using surplus water from the Tamagawa Aqueduct, the garden, called “Tamagawa-en,” was opened to the public in each of the four seasons.

Following the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the Ministry of Finance purchased the Naito Shinjuku residence and surrounding lands. In 1872, the Meiji government established the Naito Shinjuku Experimental Station on a site totaling 58.3 hectares to promote and improve modern agriculture in Japan. Adapting many Western techniques, the garden cultivated around 3,000 types of fruits and vegetables, and conducted wide-ranging research into areas such as silkworm cultivation and cattle breeding. Further programs for agricultural advancements continued, including the establishment of the Agriculture Training Institute in 1874. (This later became the Komaba Agricultural School that was the predecessor of the Faculty of Agriculture at Tokyo University.)

After the operations of the Naito Shinjuku Experimental Station were transferred to the Mita Institute of Breeding Plants and the Komaba Agricultural School, in 1879, the Shinjuku lands were donated to the Imperial Household and were controlled by the Ministry of the Imperial Household. The property was renamed the Imperial Botanical Garden. During the period of the Imperial Botanical Garden, in addition to the fruit orchards and silk mill that were taken over from the Naito Shinjuku Experimental Station, a duck habitat, zoo (granted to the Ueno Zoological Gardens in 1926), and other new facilities were created, and the land served as an imperial estate and hunting grounds. The name was then changed to Shinjuku Goryochi (imperial estate) in 1886, and the small-scale horticulture field on the garden grounds became designated as the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Garden, with a focus on horticulture studies. In 1892, the first full-scale heated greenhouse in Japan was constructed, and became an important defining facility of horticulture work at the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Garden. The Old Imperial Rest House was constructed in 1896 to serve as a resting place for the emperor and imperial family when they came to view the plants at the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Garden greenhouse.

Fukuba Hayato was an important figure who played a key role in turning the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Garden into a garden which is the basis of the present Shinjuku Gyoen. In 1877, Fukuba Hayato became an agricultural student at the Naito Shinjuku Experimental Station, and he studied in France and Germany for three years beginning in 1886. After his return, he worked to recreate a Western-style heated greenhouse with temperature control. This greenhouse was used to cultivate not only Western fruits and vegetables, but also tropical and sub-tropical plants. Some of his achievements in fruit cultivation include the production of the Fukuba Strawberry, Japan’s first strawberry, as well as an ancestor of the modern muskmelon and a grape variety known as Muscat of Alexandria.

In 1898, Fukuba Hayato became head of the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Gardens. During a visit to France in 1900, following the highly acclaimed exhibition of three large chrysanthemum displays at the Paris Exposition, Fukuba asked Henri Martinet, a professor at the Versailles horticultural school, to prepare a new garden scheme for renovating the Shinjuku Imperial Botanical Gardens to create a Western-style garden. The garden underwent large-scale renovations over five years from 1902 to 1906. Upon its completion, it became the basis of the Shinjuku Gyoen layout today.