Yokoamicho Park

Published on : 15/02/2014
by : Japan Experience

Yokoamicho Koen Park 横網町公園

Memorial Museum for the Kanto Earthquake Disaster, Yokoami-cho Koen, Ryogoku, Tokyo.

Reconstruction Memorial Hall, Ryogoku, Tokyo

Yokoamicho Koen Park is in the Ryogoku district of Tokyo, the spiritual home of Japanese sumo wresting, a short walk from the Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo arena.

This spacious, green, and beautifully laid out park dates from 1930 and combines natural, artistic and architectural beauty with poignant historical interest. The Tokyo Metropolitan Hall of Repose (Tokyo-to Ireido) here is a large concrete Buddhist temple-style hall with a 41 meter-high (134 feet) three-story pagoda.

History

Tokyo purchased the land from the army in 1922 and was working on turning it into a park when the Great Kanto Earthquake struck in 1923. To escape the destruction, tens of thousands of evacuees from surrounding areas fled here on that fateful day of September 1, but at around 4 p.m. a fire which had grown to tornado-like proportions engulfed the whole park, incinerating the approximately 30,000 people assembled there. The yet-to-be completed park's future was thereby set as a place of remembrance for the tragedy.

The Hall of Repose was originally built in 1930 to commemorate those victims. After the renewed destruction of World War Two, it was rebuilt in 1951.

Large paintings hanging around the walls inside still depict scenes from during and after the earthquake. By default, the 'repose' element of the Hall is also associated with the victims of the bombing of Tokyo during the last two years of World War Two.

Memorial Museum for the Kanto Earthquake Disaster, Ryogoku, Tokyo.

Reconstruction Memorial Hall, Ryogoku, Tokyo

Yokoamicho Park in the snow, Ryogoku, Tokyo.

Yokoamicho Park in the snow, Ryogoku, Tokyo

The other hall on the grounds of Yokoamicho Park is the Reconstruction Memorial Hall (Fukko Kinen-kan), built in 1931, a year after the opening of the Park.

As the name suggests, it is a monument to the efforts of those who rebuilt the city, devastated by the fires that ravaged Tokyo in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake. The Memorial Hall also remembers those who died in the bombing of Tokyo, which was mainly concentrated on eastern Tokyo, only a couple of decades later.

The Reconstruction Memorial Hall comprises two floors full of realia, artworks, and data presentations - albeit quite old.

The ground floor of the Reconstruction Memorial Hall is dedicated to the Great Kanto earthquake, and upstairs is about the Second World War. 20 minutes wandering through the Hall conveys a memorable impression of the destruction visited upon Tokyo by both events. Depictions of the disasters in art by children of the time are particularly moving.

Outside the Reconstruction Memorial Hall are the twisted forms of various machines and facilities melted in the fires of the Great Kanto Earthquake.

Also of note here are the Monument to the Child Victims of the Earthquake, the Japanese-style garden, and sculptor Kimio Tsuchiya's Peace Monument to the Tokyo victims of World War Two, constructed in 2001. In the center of a huge inclined semi-circle of stone planted with flowers is a small room containing the names of 100,000 victims.

Memorial Museum for the Kanto Earthquake Disaster, Yokoami-cho Koen, Ryogoku, Tokyo.