Sugamo yakuen

• Established: 1798
• Defunct: c. 1868
• Other Names: 綿羊屋敷 (men'yô yashiki)
• Japanese: 巣鴨薬園 (Sugamo yakuen)

The Sugamo yakuen was a garden for growing medicinal plants, maintained within the grounds of the Tsu han mansion in Edo, in what is today the Sugamo area of Tokyo. It covered an area of roughly 12,000 tsubo (40,000 sq meters).

In 1769, the Tokugawa shogunate entrusted Ina Hanzaemon with overseeing the area as shogunate forest. In 1798, it became a medicinal plants garden managed by Shibue Chôhaku (1760-1830), who worked for the shogunate. Such medicinal gardens have a long history in Japan, stretching back to the early 8th century, but the Tokugawa shogunate actively pushed for the development of a system of such gardens, establishing ones in Koishikawa, Komaba, and elsewhere in and around Edo. Owari, Aizu, Satsuma, Kumamoto, and Chôshû domains, among others, also established medicinal gardens within the grounds of their Edo mansions.

Chôhaku is said to have been the first to farm sheep in Japan, beginning in 1817; it is from this that the garden came to also be known as men'yô yashiki, or "sheep mansion."

After the Meiji Restoration, the area ceased to be actively used as a medicinal plants garden, and became someone's private property for a time. In 1937, however, an official city market (run by Tokyo City) was established there, and the site remains today home to the Toshima Market location of the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market.

References

• Plaques on-site.[1]