Garden of Statues in Heiwadai Park

One of the history teachers who used to work at my school (he was transferred to Miyakonojo) sent me on a little treasure hunt one typhoon day. The students weren’t at school and I was sitting at my desk wondering why the teachers bother to come in. I guess he figured I was bored, so he gave me a clue and sent me off looking for a haniwa, or burial statue,  hiding somewhere on the grounds.

I never did find it, granted I wasn’t much into looking for it in the rain, and so he ended up pointing it out to me. It was almost identical to a statue I had seen sitting under my neighbour’s carport. He explained that they were burial statues and that there was a whole garden of them in Miyazaki City, which he urged me to visit.

And so, on the second day of Matthew’s visit, and almost a year later, I thought why not finally check it out.

Heiwadai Park is like the Central Park of Miyazaki; it’s so beautiful and vast that were it not for the views of the city from the Peace Tower, you could forget you were there altogether.

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Completed in 1940, the tower was built in celebration of the 2 600th anniversary of the imperial era. Stone blocks were sent from all over Asia for its construction, meaning for it to symbolize peace and unity. It served as a starting point for the second part of the torch relay for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

With a base of 1023 m², the tower is seriously impressive and I spent a good half hour soaking in its design.

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North of the tower, in the forest, is the Haniwa Garden. It contains over 400 earthenware replicas of burial statues found all over the country when kofun mounds were excavated.

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The garden path leads to other parts of the forest – we ended up near a small lake. While Matthew went off to explore an area marked with “Warning – snakes!” signs, I stayed at the  lake and marvelled at the trees beginning to change colour. I love that Japan has four distinct seasons.

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On the way home we stopped at Takanabe beach to catch the last of the day’s sun. This town is so underrated.

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2 Comments

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Isabellereply
November 14, 2014 at 6:02 PM

Wow those burial statues remind me of Miyazaki’s animations 🙂 Awesome pics as usual miss Goth!

Simonereply
November 17, 2014 at 8:41 AM
– In reply to: Isabelle

Oh yeah? 🙂 Which one is your favourite? Thank you!

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