Sanshi-no-mori Park, Tokyo

Why you should experience Sanshi-no-mori Park in Tokyo, Japan.

Sanshi-no-mori Park is a deeply rooted urban park where Wada's silk-making heritage, mature woodland, broad recreation spaces and surviving industrial traces turn a former scientific campus into one of Suginami's most historically distinctive green spaces.

Set along Ome Kaido near Kannana-dori and just steps from Higashi-koenji Station, the 27,000-square-meter park unfolds through gathering lawns, wooded retreats, play areas and water features while preserving physical remnants of the institution that once occupied the grounds. The former brick entrance gate and guardhouse survive within the landscape, while mature mulberry trees preserve the botanical material that underpinned generations of silkworm research. A broad waterfall introduces movement and sound beside the woodland, and the shared boundary with Suginami No. 10 Elementary School keeps the grounds closely connected with neighborhood life. The result is a park where Wada's scientific inheritance remains physically present beneath the greenery, allowing recreation, trees and surviving architecture to carry the memory of an industry that once connected this quiet corner of Suginami with global trade.

What you should know about Sanshi-no-mori Park.

Sanshi-no-mori Park is best known for occupying the former headquarters of the government sericulture research institution established here in 1911 as the Gensanshu Seizosho, or Original Silkworm Seed Manufacturing Station, when Japan was the world's leading producer and exporter of raw silk. The institution began under director Tatsushiro Kagayama as a national center for standardizing silkworm breeds and improving silk production, before becoming the Sericultural Experiment Station in 1914 with 82 employees and six regional branches. Japan's raw-silk industry expanded dramatically around the laboratory, with national production reaching 42,619 tonnes in 1930 after raw silk had remained the country's leading export commodity for 75 years through 1934. Research continued at Koenji for seven decades before the institution transferred to Tsukuba Science City in 1980, releasing the former scientific campus for the park and school that subsequently inherited the site.

Hidekichi Hiratsuka carried the Koenji institution through another crucial chapter as a sericultural scientist whose work connected silkworm breeding with the international competitiveness of Japanese silk across the early Shōwa period and postwar recovery. The surviving mulberry collection preserves that scientific lineage biologically, including mature trees and the comparatively uncommon Cudrania tricuspidata, while a weeping mulberry near the entrance recalls the experimental cultivation once conducted across the station's extensive mulberry fields. Suginami City embedded those remnants within the new landscape after park construction began in March 1985, completing Sanshi-no-mori Park on July 31, 1986 and erecting a monument that same year dedicated to the birthplace of sericultural science and technology. Together, Hiratsuka, the surviving mulberries, the 1911 brick gate and the 1986 memorial allow Sanshi-no-mori Park to function as a living continuation of the scientific culture that occupied the site for nearly seventy years.

How to fold Sanshi-no-mori Park into your trip.

Sanshi-no-mori Park works naturally as the green opening to an afternoon exploring the western edge of Koenji, moving from Japan's silk-science inheritance into Buddhist architecture and finally the independent cultural world that gives the neighborhood its contemporary identity.

Begin at Myohoji Temple, where the Nichiren Buddhist complex developed around the revered Yakuyoke Soshi image before the present Niomon Gate was completed in 1787 and the iron gate designed by Josiah Conder in 1878 introduced early Western architectural authorship into the temple precinct. Continue to Koenji Hikawa Shrine, where the grounds also contain Japan's only shrine dedicated to meteorology, a tradition connected with the former Imperial Japanese Army weather unit before the shrine became closely associated with weather forecasting and votive culture. Conclude at Za-Koenji Public Theatre, opened in 2009 to a design by Toyo Ito, whose tent-like roof, black exterior and performance spaces provide an architectural home for theater, dance and Koenji's celebrated Awa Odori culture. The progression moves from Sanshi-no-mori Park's national silk research through Conder's Meiji architectural encounter and Koenji's unusual meteorological tradition into Toyo Ito's contemporary theater, revealing a neighborhood repeatedly shaped by specialized knowledge and creative experimentation.

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