On a special stage set up in the Koishikawa Korakuen Garden, children with feather decorations were performing a Bugaku dance

Bugaku at Koishikawa Korakuen Garden — Children performing Bugaku

Korakuen Garden in Koraku, Tokyo is also quite large, though not as large as Korakuen Garden in Okayama. It is a Japanese garden built in the Edo residence of the Mito Tokugawa family. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Mito Tokugawa family garden is Kairakuen, but this is also a garden of the Mito Tokugawa family. On the other hand, Korakuen Garden in Okayama was built by Tsunamasa Ikeda, the feudal lord of Okayama, and does not belong to the Tokugawa family. It's a bit complicated.

Both the garden in Okayama and the one in Koraku, Tokyo, are named after a sentence in "Memorial to Yueyang Tower", a prose book written by Fan Zhongyan, the most famous retainer of the Song Dynasty, which says, "Bear the hardship and bitterness before others, enjoy comfort and happiness after others." This attitude is wonderful, but I wonder how it is possible for a person belonging to the privileged class of the Shogun's family to give such a name to something that he had made with great care and luxury. It seems to me that he is not fully practicing his motto. Perhaps it was the best they could do in a class society.

On this day, Bugaku was being performed at the Koishikawa Korakuen Garden. The stage was set up under a magnificent pine tree, surrounded by players of sho, raku drums, dragon flutes, and other instruments, and on the stage danced a child in costume. This was a performance called Karyobin, the name of which comes from an imaginary Buddhist creature with a human upper body and a bird lower body. That's why the children dancing on the stage had feather-like ornaments on their backs.

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