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| Aoyama Cemetery: Gaienmae | |||
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Although Aoyama Cemetery is most famous for the 200 cherry blossom trees that line the central thoroughfare, this huge 26,000-square-meter park in the heart of Tokyo offers a wonderful respite from noise and congestion every day of the year. There are plans to turn it into a tourist attraction, with signposts and hiking routes, but in fact the park is already a very popular strolling place. Any fine weekend you'll find people here walking their dogs, strolling, sitting on benches, reading, canoodling, taking pictures, etc. - just what you'd expect in any major metropolitan park. There are even a few people tending graves, arranging flowers and offering incense to remind you that this verdant oasis is in fact a graveyard.
The graves are interesting too. Aside from the usual graveyard architecture, there are also mausoleums and triumphal arches, statues, obelisks and rocks. One military-looking grave even has a large, bronze-green cannon barrel and four shells aimed at the sky. While its residents are not quite as famous (or infamous) as the dead in Pere Lachaise in Paris or Highgate Cemetery in London, Aoyama Cemetery boasts some big names from Japanese history: assassinated Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai; poet and novelist Doppo Kunikida; romantic fiction writer Koyo Ozaki; politician Toshimichi Okubo; poet Mokichi Saito and writer Shiga Naoya. In the foreign cemetery, European and American graves reveal a potted history of the Meiji era: the place is full of engineers, diplomats, academics and Christian missionaries. There's a huge gravestone for Wm. Kinninmond Burton, an intrepid Scottish engineer who taught at Imperial University until his death in 1899. Established in 1872, the cemetery is organized in a grid pattern and around the main crisscrossing roads. Away from the avenues of cherry trees, the park reveals a number of different faces: there are little valleys and hills, shady groves and open spaces. The graves come in a variety of styles and ornaments, mostly in the traditional Japanese style of raised stone gardens with fences. Each one is a miniature garden in itself. The foliage is similarly impressive, with each little path leading on to another surprise: a dramatic tree or overgrown grave, a glorious array of fresh flowers in front of a well-tended gravestone, or a stand of brilliant scarlet canna lilies. The place is inhabited by stray cats and a swarm of crows - and also frequented by pickpockets, so watch your belongings. The cemetery covers the area between Gaien-Nishi-dori and Gaien-Higashi-dori. It can be reached from either Gaienmae, Aoyama Itchome or Nogizaka stations. It's also the evacuation point for Minato-ku residents. While there are tea houses at either end of the main path, you might want to go for an authentic Chinese noodle experience in the ramshackle Kaotan Ramen stand at the Nishi-Azabu end of the cemetery. by Richard Jeffery |
Aoyama Cemetery
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