Brooklyn Botanic Garden is honored to announce that it has received a gift of a mikoshi—a portable shrine—from the Association of Shinto Shrines in Japan (Jinja Honcho), on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of BBG’s iconic Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. Considered the masterpiece of its creator, landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881–1943), the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was the first Japanese garden created in an American public garden and is one of the oldest and most visited Japanese-inspired gardens outside Japan.
As part of Shinto tradition, a mikoshi is a portable jinja (shrine) for kami (divinities) to be carried within a village offering protection. Today, mikoshi are used throughout Japan in lively parades during local seasonal festivals. There are more than 80,000 Shinto shrines throughout Japan, many of which are featured in the over 100,000 local festivals that take place in the country annually. BBG’s Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden contains a shrine dedicated to Inari, the harvest deity, which was part of the original 1915 landscape design.
Tsunekiyo Tanaka, President of the Association of Shinto Shrines in Japan, and Yasunori Tone, Chief Priest of Samukawa Jinja, traveled from Japan for a special ceremony presenting the mikoshi to BBG on April 5. Along with Scot Medbury, president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Tone spoke of the mutual cultural admiration between Japan and the U.S., represented in the gift of the mikoshi, as well as in BBG’s 100-year old Japanese garden.
To create mikoshi, craftsmen use carefully chosen materials and employ traditional techniques and skills of woodwork, lacquering, metal carving, and sculpting. The mikoshi BBG has received is primarily crafted from zelkova and Japanese cypress wood with extensive decorative brass work.
Visitors can view the mikoshi in BBG’s Conservatory Gallery through June 12, 2016. Also on view in the Gallery is Mizue Sawano: Images of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, an exhibit of the artist’s recent paintings highlighting the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden and other Garden landscapes. Further information on the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden’s 100th anniversary can be found at bbg.org/japanesegarden100.