Hibiya Park (日比谷公園 ''Hibiya Kōen'') is a

park A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are green spaces set aside for recreation inside towns and cities. ...

Chiyoda City is a special ward located in central Tokyo, Japan. It is known as Chiyoda City in English.Profile ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. It covers an area of 161,636.66 m² (40 acres) between the east gardens of the Imperial Palace to the north, the Shinbashi district to the southeast and the

Kasumigaseki Kasumigaseki (霞が関, 霞ヶ関 or 霞ケ関) is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda Special wards of Tokyo, Ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is the location of most of Japan's Cabinet of Japan, cabinet ministry offices. The name is often used ...

government district to the west.

History

The land was occupied by the estates of the

Mōri clan The Mōri clan (毛利氏 ''Mōri-shi'') was a Japanese samurai clan descended from Ōe no Hiromoto. Ōe no Hiromoto was descended from the Fujiwara clan. The family's most illustrious member, Mōri Motonari, greatly expanded the clan's power ...

and Nabeshima clan during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

, and it was used for army maneuvers during the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

. It was converted to a park and opened to the public on June 1, 1903. On September 5, 1905, the park was the origin of the Hibiya riots, a major citywide riot that erupted in protest of the

Treaty of Portsmouth A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between actors in international law. It is usually made by and between sovereign states, but can include international organizations, individuals, business entities, and other legal pers ...

which ended the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

(1904−1905). The riots lasted two days resulting in seventeen people being killed and 331 arrested, as well a large amount of property damage. The riots were against the terms of the treaty, which were lenient to Russia, but also against bureaucrats who refused accept the will of the people on foreign policy. The park is famous for the Shisei Kaikan (市政会館), a brick building built in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style in 1929, which once housed the Domei Tsushin state wire service and its postwar successors

Kyodo News is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 million ...

and

Jiji Press is a news agency in Japan. History Jiji was formed in November 1945 following the breakup of Domei Tsushin, the government-controlled news service responsible for disseminating information prior to and during World War II. Jiji inherited Do ...

. The park is also home to the "Risky Ginkgo," a ginkgo tree that is about 500 years old and almost cost the park's designer his job when he fought to save the tree in 1901. The park is also known for its open-air concert venue,

Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall The is an outdoor theater in Tokyo, Japan's Hibiya Park. There are actually two concert halls; the smaller was erected during the Meiji era, and the larger was first built in the Taishō era. The larger venue is colloquially abbreviated to . N ...

(日比谷野外音楽堂), commonly known as Yaon (野音), as well as for its tennis courts (for which reservations are hotly contested because of their proximity to the financial and government districts). World War II took a toll on the park when almost all the trees and fencing was used for the war effort.

Surrounding buildings

* Attorneys' Hall (Japan Federation of Bar Associations headquarters) * Fukoku Seimei Building *

Imperial Hotel, Tokyo The is a hotel in Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda ward, Tokyo. It was created in the late 1880s at the request of the Japanese aristocracy to cater to the increasing number of Western visitors to Japan. The hotel site is located just south of the I ...

Ministry of the Environment An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment ...

* Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare *

Ministry of Justice A Ministry of Justice is a common type of government department that serves as a justice ministry. Lists of current ministries of justice Named "Ministry" * Ministry of Justice (Abkhazia) * Ministry of Justice (Afghanistan) * Ministry of Justi ...

Mizuho Bank is the integrated retail and corporate banking unit of Mizuho Financial Group (; ), the third largest financial services company in Japan, with total assets of approximately $1.8 trillion in 2017. Mizuho is one of the three so-called Japane ...

Building *

Nissay Theatre The is a theatre in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is located in the Nissay Hibiya Building, designed by the architect Togo Murano. It was completed in 1963 and opened with a performance by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Since then it has been used to s ...

* NTT Hibiya Building *

Shinsei Bank is a leading diversified Japanese financial institution that provides a full range of financial products and services to both institutional and individual customers. It is owned by SBI Group and headquartered in Chuo, Tokyo. History SBI Shinse ...

Building *

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is a Japanese multinational banking and financial services institution headquartered in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and se ...

Building

Education

operates public elementary and junior high schools. Chiyoda Elementary School (千代田小学校) is the zoned elementary of Hibiya Park. There is a freedom of choice system for junior high schools in Chiyoda Ward, and so there are no specific junior high school zones.

Gallery

File:Hibiya Park02s3872.jpg, Hibiya Park Lake and Wisteria Grove File:Municipal Research Building (2018-05-04) 02.jpg, ''Shisei Kaikan'', former home of Japan's newswires File:Stone money at Hibiya Park in Tokyo.JPG,

Rai stone A rai stone ( yap, raay), or fei stone, is one of many large artifacts that were manufactured and treasured by the native inhabitants of the Yap islands in Micronesia. They are also known as Yapese stone money or similar names. The typical rai ...

in Hibiya Park File:Hibiya Ongaku-Do Meiji Era.jpg, Ongaku-do, Hibiya Park, Tokyo, 1909 File:Hibiya Park in autumn 2.jpg, autumn File:Hibiya Park - various - April 13 2019 sunny day.jpeg,

File:The Pelican Fountain in Hibiya Park, Tokyo.jpg, The Pelican Fountain

References

External links

Tokyo Parks Association official webpage
{{Authority control Chiyoda, Tokyo Parks and gardens in Tokyo