Koishikawa Botanical Garden

The History of Koishikawa Botanical Garden dates back to 1684 during the Edo period in Japan. The eighth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Yoshimune, received a written petition from a Chinese medicine doctor suggesting the establishment of a public clinic to provide medical services to the common people of Edo. Tokugawa Yoshimune accepted the suggestion and established the Koishikawa Yojosho in the Koishikawa medicinal herb garden, providing medical treatment to the poor in the Edo area and conducting medical research. With the introduction of Western technology, the status between Western medicine and Chinese medicine began to shift. The medical value of the Koishikawa Yojosho gradually diminished, and the Japanese government eventually decided to close the Koishikawa Yojosho, transferring the Koishikawa medicinal herb garden to the Tokyo Medical School, which was founded at the end of the Edo period. In 1877, the Tokyo Medical School merged with the Tokyo Kaisei School to form the University of Tokyo. Since then, the Koishikawa Botanical Garden has officially become an affiliated botanical garden of the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo, becoming the most important cradle for modern botanical research and talent cultivation in Japan.