Kids wearing yellow caps were returning to the kindergarten after playing in Kiyosumi Park

Near Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station, there is a Japanese garden called Kiyosumi Garden. It is said to have been the legendary wealthy merchant Kinokuniya Bunzaemon's residence and became a subordinate residence of the Kuze clan, lord of the Sekiyado domain during the Kyoho era. According to old maps, the garden was already established in the late Edo period. However, it was not completed as a Japanese tour garden until 1878, when Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu, bought it.

In 1924, after the Great Kanto Earthquake, Mitsubishi's third president, Hisaya Iwasaki, donated the eastern half of the garden to Tokyo for use as a park, and that was the beginning of the current Kiyosumi Garden. Inside the garden, there is a large pond, sukiya-style architecture, and famous stones collected from all over Japan by the Iwasaki family are placed here and there, and it has been designated as a place of scenic beauty by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

What is interesting here is the western half of the site, which was not donated to Tokyo by Hisaya Iwasaki in 1924. Eventually, the western half was donated to Tokyo, but it was never combined with Kiyosumi Garden again. The western half is now open to the public as Kiyosumi Park, which is separate from Kiyosumi Garden. Kiyosumi Garden and Kiyosumi Park. If you didn't know, you would think they were the same thing. Indeed, the two are right next to each other. However, while Kiyosumi Garden is a fee-based garden that you have to pay to enter, Kiyosumi Park is a park that anyone can enter.

When I thought about it, I had been to Kiyosumi Garden before, but never to Kiyosumi Park. So I went there. Kiyosumi Park was a nondescript park. There were mothers with their children in baby carriages, old people who looked bored, and children from the neighborhood kindergarten. After circling the park, which had no particular attractions, I walked out of the park at the same time as the children wearing yellow caps.