Famous Japanese gardens in Japan: what makes a Japanese garden, the three great gardens of Kenrokuen, Korakuen and Kairakuen, Ritsurin in Takamatsu, the zen and temple gardens of Kyoto, Japanese gardens in Tokyo, seasons and night openings, entry fees, hours and paying, garden rules, and how to plan a visit

What makes a Japanese garden

Japan's national tourism organisation, JNTO, says that the gardens here make use of space, water and sound, and that Japanese gardens are "meticulously designed to feel more vast than they actually are". A pond can stand in for the sea. At Kenrokuen in Kanazawa, the lords of Kaga made their big pond stand for the ocean and set in it an island meant for a legendary wizard, keeper of the secret of eternal youth, as a wish for long life and lasting prosperity.

A garden is seen in one of two ways, and Kenrokuen's own site explains the difference. In a sit-and-view garden you enjoy the landscape from one spot in a temple or a palace. A strolling-style garden lays out its ponds and hills, with cottages and tea houses among them, across a wide area, and you walk round it to see it. Kenrokuen is a strolling garden, and so is the pond garden of Tenryu-ji in Kyoto, where a level path round the pond shows you the scenery from many angles. The rock garden of Ryoan-ji, also in Kyoto, is the other kind: you look at it from the abbot's hall, the hojo.

The dry garden is the kind most visitors picture first. Its Japanese name is karesansui, and JNTO describes it in one line: "These dry landscape gardens use sand and stones to express the movement of water instead." At Daisen-in in Kyoto, JNTO says, the dry garden uses nothing but stones, sand, trees and plants to show water running from mountain to sea.

Borrowed scenery makes a garden look larger by taking in what lies outside it. JNTO's example is Tenryu-ji in Arashiyama, set against the Kameyama and Arashiyama foothills, and its advice is to look not only at what is in front of you but at the scenery around the garden as well. Sound matters too. A stone wash basin, where guests rinse their hands before going into a tea ceremony room, adds the sound of flowing water, and in autumn the leaves crunch under visitors' feet.

The three great gardens: Kenrokuen, Korakuen and Kairakuen

Kenrokuen's site says that it "stands as one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan", naming Koraku-en in Okayama and Kairaku-en in Mito as the other two, and Okayama Korakuen calls itself one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan. All three were made for daimyo, the feudal lords of the Edo period.

Kenrokuen, Kanazawa

Kenrokuen grew over generations under the lords of Kaga, the Maeda family, and was named in 1822 by Matsudaira Sadanobu, who ruled the Shirakawa Domain. The name, the garden's site explains, means "garden that combines six characteristics". An ancient Chinese book of gardens names six qualities a garden can aspire to, in pairs: spaciousness and seclusion, artifice and antiquity, and water-courses and panoramas. It is rare, the site says, to find a garden with all six.

The garden opened fully to the public in 1874 and became a Special Place of Scenic Beauty in 1985, a rank its site likens to that of a National Treasure. Look for the Kotoji lantern, a stone lantern with legs of different lengths, and for the stone paving laid in a diamond pattern. Shigure-tei, a tea house in the garden, serves matcha and a seasonal sweet; our tea ceremony guide has its prices and hours.

Okayama Korakuen

In 1687 Ikeda Tsunamasa, the daimyo of Okayama, had his retainer Tsuda Nagatada start work on a new garden, and it was 1700, 13 years later, before the groundwork was finished. Later lords changed its ponds, hills, lawns and buildings over the years, but the garden's site says the first idea of it as "a wide, bright space offering beautiful inner and outer vistas" never changed. In 1884 ownership passed to Okayama Prefecture, and the garden became a public one. A typhoon in 1934 and an air raid in 1945 damaged it badly, and it was restored from old plans and photographs. It became a Special Place of Scenic Beauty in 1952.

Combined tickets also cover Okayama Castle; our guide to Japanese castles has more on castle visits.

Kairakuen, Mito

Kairakuen was made by Tokugawa Nariaki, the ninth lord of the Mito Domain, and its site says the name expresses his hope that he and the people of his domain could enjoy the garden together. He founded it as one half of a pair with Kodokan, a school for literature and the martial arts: Kodokan for study, Kairakuen for rest. The garden is best known for its plum blossoms, and the Plum Blossom Festival runs every year from mid-February to the end of March.

The recommended route takes 45 minutes. It passes through a grove of more than 1,000 Moso bamboo, which Nariaki brought from Kyoto as material for bows, and a forest of giant cedars, to Kobuntei. Outside the festival, the garden is free for everyone from opening until 9:00.

Ritsurin Garden, Takamatsu

Ritsurin, in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, is not one of the three, but it is a lord's garden of the same kind. Kagawa Prefecture's leaflet calls it a strolling-style daimyo garden of the Edo period, with 13 landscaped hills and 6 ponds set against Mt. Shiun-zan. Ritsurin means chestnut grove, yet the garden has always been full of pines: about 1,400 of them, of which about 1,000 are shaped by the gardeners, some over 300 years old.

You can see the South Pond from a wasen, a traditional boat, and the leaflet calls the view from Hirai-ho, a hill made to resemble Mt. Fuji, the best in the garden: it takes in the Kikugetsu-tei teahouse, loved by the lords of Takamatsu, with Mt. Shiun-zan behind. Plum trees flower in February and March, and the maples turn in late November.

Zen and temple gardens in Kyoto

JNTO notes that Japan has had famous gardens for more than 1,000 years, especially in Kyoto, the country's cultural and political centre at the time. Many of the best known belong to temples. Two you can simply walk into are Ryoan-ji, with its rock garden, and Tenryu-ji in Arashiyama, with its pond garden. Two others need planning: Saiho-ji, the moss temple, takes visitors by reservation only, and Katsura Imperial Villa only on a guided tour.

Ryoan-ji: the rock garden

The rock garden of Ryoan-ji is very small and very plain: 15 stones of various sizes in a space of just 248 square metres, enclosed by an earthen wall. No one knows who made it. The temple dates it to the Muromachi period and lists the theories: the temple's founder, Giten Gensho, its patron Hosokawa Katsumoto or his son Masamoto, or the tea master Kanamori Sowa. Nor does anyone know what it means. The temple says it is usually called a "Tiger taking the cubs over the stream" garden or a Seven-Five-Three garden, after numbers thought lucky, and others see it as islands dotted in the sea, or as mountain peaks rising through cloud.

Look closely and the garden is less simple than it seems. The temple explains that the ground slopes slightly towards the far left corner, as seen from the abbot's hall, so that rain drains away, and that the wall on the right slants down towards the far end, a trick of perspective that makes the garden look deeper. The wall itself is 180 cm high and made of clay mixed with rapeseed oil, and it shades the garden from the glare of the sun on the white sand.

The temple itself was founded in 1450, when Hosokawa Katsumoto received a mountain villa and invited the zen priest Giten Gensho to turn it into a temple. It burned in the Onin War about two decades later and was rebuilt by Masamoto. The abbot's hall was built in 1499, and the garden, the temple says, was probably made at the same time.

Tenryu-ji: the Sogenchi pond garden

The shogun Ashikaga Takauji founded Tenryu-ji in Arashiyama in 1339 to honour the memory of Emperor Go-Daigo, and the zen master Muso Soseki became its first abbot. Muso Soseki laid out its garden, the Sogenchi, nearly 700 years ago, and the temple says it still keeps its original look; a guide to Kyoto's gardens printed in 1799 shows it much as it is today. It was the first site in Japan to be named both a Special Historic Site and a Special Place of Scenic Beauty.

The Sogenchi is a strolling pond garden, and it uses borrowed scenery, shakkei, "in which nearby mountains are used to give the garden a sense of added depth". From the centre of the abbot's hall veranda you look straight across the pond to a group of tall standing rocks.

Saiho-ji: the moss temple

Saiho-ji, known as Kokedera, the moss temple, is famous for a garden covered in moss. Its site says the moss began to spread after natural disasters and war: the temple's buildings burned in the Onin War, and floods from the river later left the temple in ruins. So that visitors can spend a quieter time there, it takes small numbers of them by reservation only. "This policy has been in place since 1977." You book on the temple's own site; do not go without a reservation.

Katsura Imperial Villa

Katsura Imperial Villa in western Kyoto is run by the Imperial Household Agency, and you can only see it on a tour guided by its staff. Places are limited, so you apply in advance, online, and the agency's site also has a page on walk-in registration. Tours in English for foreign visitors leave at 9:20, 11:20, 13:20, 15:20 and 16:20. The villa is closed on Mondays (on Tuesday when Monday is a national holiday) and from 28 December to 4 January.

Japanese gardens in Tokyo

Central Tokyo still has gardens made by the lords who lived in Edo, as the city was then called. Tokyo has nine metropolitan gardens, and three of them are easy to add to a day of sightseeing: Rikugien at Komagome, Koishikawa Korakuen near Tokyo Dome, and Hama-rikyu by the bay. Shinjuku Gyoen, a national garden, has a Japanese garden inside a much larger park.

Rikugien

Rikugien and Koishikawa Korakuen were counted together as the two great gardens of Edo. In 1695 the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, gave the land at Komagome to Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, who designed the garden and directed the work himself, digging a pond and building hills on the flat ground; the Tokyo gardens leaflet dates the garden to 1702. It is a strolling garden, and the leaflet says it "reflects tastes and flavor of the world of Waka poetry": its 88 views copy the coast of Waka-no-ura in Wakayama and places famous in classical waka verse. Later it belonged to Iwasaki Yataro, the founder of Mitsubishi, and in 1938 the Iwasakis presented the garden to what was then the City of Tokyo.

Koishikawa Korakuen

Tokugawa Yorifusa, the first lord of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, began this garden in 1629, and his son Mitsukuni, the second lord, completed it with advice from a Chinese Confucian scholar; the same family's ninth lord made Kairakuen in Mito. The Chinese influence shows across the garden. The Engetsu-kyo bridge took its name from its reflection on the water, which "appeared like a full moon". About 500 maples turn red from late November to early December.

Hama-rikyu Gardens

Hama-rikyu, by Tokyo Bay, is a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Historic Site, and its centre is the Shioiri-no-ike, a tidal pond that draws in seawater and changes with the tide. "The pond is the only remaining seawater pond from the Edo era within Tokyo." Lock gates open and close with the level of the bay. You can drink matcha at the Nakajima teahouse on the pond; see our tea ceremony guide.

Shinjuku Gyoen

Shinjuku Gyoen has three gardens in one: a formal garden, a landscape garden designed by Henri Martinet, and a Japanese traditional garden. The Japanese garden runs along the Upper Pond. It began as an imperial duck habitat and took its present form in 1903, and in it are a Chinese-style pavilion, Kyu-Goryo-Tei, as well as two teahouses, Shouten-Tei and Rakuu-Tei. You can buy an e-ticket in advance from ASOVIEW, which sells them for the Ministry of the Environment; a ticket can be used for up to six months after you buy it.

Seasons and night openings

Every garden changes with the seasons, and many open late on a few nights a year. These are the dates the gardens' own sites give for 2026, and the times of year they name for each sight.

Yukitsuri is a traditional gardener's skill, and the Tokyo gardens leaflet lists it with komomaki, the straw belts also used at Korakuen, among the winter protections for plants. Kenrokuen also holds light-ups, opening at night in the cherry blossom and autumn leaf seasons, and posts the details in its news.

Entry fees, opening hours and how to pay

Entry to a Japanese garden costs a few hundred yen, and the big public gardens now take cards and transport IC cards as well as cash. The temples are another matter: the English pages of Ryoan-ji and Tenryu-ji do not say how to pay, and neither does Ritsurin's, so carry enough yen in cash. Which IC cards work, and where, is covered in our page on paying by cash or card.

Free mornings and free days

Two of the three great gardens let you in free early in the morning. At Kenrokuen the early opening is free every day, but only through the Renchi-mon and Zuishinzaka gates, and you have to leave 15 minutes before the paid hours begin, so go in by the last entry time.

Kairakuen is free for everyone from opening until 9:00, except during the Plum Blossom Festival from mid-February to the end of March. Several gardens also have free days:

Passes and combined tickets

The Tokyo metropolitan gardens sell an annual pass for all nine gardens at ¥4,000, or ¥2,000 from 65, and two-garden tickets at ¥400: one for Rikugien and Kyu-Furukawa Gardens, and one for Hama-rikyu and Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Gardens, about 15 minutes' walk apart. At Okayama, the combined tickets in the Korakuen box above cover Okayama Castle and two museums. Kenrokuen sells combined tickets too, called Kenrokuen +1 (plus one).

Garden rules and manners

The rules differ from garden to garden, but most follow the same lines. Shinjuku Gyoen has the longest list, and pets are the rule most often missed: many gardens do not allow them at all.

How to plan a garden visit

To work a garden into your day, try the itinerary planner. The prefecture guides for Ishikawa, Okayama, Ibaraki, Kagawa, Kyoto and Tokyo cover the rest of each trip, and if you would like a night inside a temple as well, see our guide to a temple stay.

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To cite or link to this page: Famous Japanese gardens in Japan: what makes a Japanese garden, the three great gardens of Kenrokuen, Korakuen and Kairakuen, Ritsurin in Takamatsu, the zen and temple gardens of Kyoto, Japanese gardens in Tokyo, seasons and night openings, entry fees, hours and paying, garden rules, and how to plan a visit — Japan Pocket Guide, https://japanpocketguide.com/culture/japanese-gardens/ Copy