Sengan-en Garden

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About Sengan-en Garden

Sengan-en is the garden of the former country residence of the Shimazu, the lords of the Satsuma domain, in north Kagoshima, on the bay. It was created in 1658 by Shimazu Mitsuhisa and expanded by his successors. The design uses the borrowed landscape technique: Sakurajima, on the other side of the water, acts as the garden’s mountain, and the bay as its lake.

The main wooden house can be visited inside, with tatami rooms, folding screens and views of the volcano. Scattered through the garden are a stone lantern shaped like a lion, small shrines, a bamboo grove of a species brought from China, and paths that climb the slope to viewpoints. A curved water channel was made for the poetry party, in which a poem was written before the cup of sake floated by.

In the 19th century, Shimazu Nariakira built the Shuseikan next door, a complex of factories inspired by Western industry, with reverberatory furnaces, cannon foundries, glassworks and spinning mills. The old stone machine workshop houses the Shoko Shuseikan Museum, and the remains of the reverberatory furnace are in the garden. These remains are part of the Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites inscribed by UNESCO.

In the area there are Satsuma cut glass shops, the Satsuma Kiriko, craft studios and tea houses serving the rice sweet jambo-mochi on skewers.