Japanese Rock Garden

The Japanese rock garden (Yaponsky sad kamney) stands in the village of Korfovsky, Khabarovsk district, Khabarovsk Krai. It is a small memorial complex in Japanese style, built around a memorial stone dedicated to the Japanese who died here in the years after the Second World War.

History

Until 1946 a camp for Japanese prisoners of war stood on the site of what later became the garden. The prisoners worked a stone quarry and produced building materials, and in summer grew vegetables such as carrots and potatoes. Over the years the camp existed, thirteen people died of disease. After the Japanese were repatriated in 1946-1947, the camp buildings were dismantled, and for a long time only a patch of waste ground on the edge of Korfovsky marked the place.

In the 1990s, on the initiative of Japanese citizens and with the agreement of the village administration, a granite stone with a memorial plaque was installed here. The landscaped garden around the stone appeared much later, in 2018-2019, as part of the events of the Cross Year of Russia in Japan and Japan in Russia. The project was designed by landscape designer Koichi Kobayashi (Kobayashi Design), and the groundworks were carried out by the company SK Kommstroy under the direction of Aleksei Kharchenko. The garden was formally opened in Khabarovsk district on 26 October 2019.

Legends

Local residents call the memorial "the Japanese teacher's monument". According to one version, one of the prisoners of war was a teacher who taught his fellow inmates in the camp. Another version holds that the stone commemorates a former professor of Tokyo University who died here in captivity. Both versions are passed on as local stories and are not documented.

What to see

The garden's composition centres on the same granite memorial stone, around which plants and decorative rocks in the tradition of a Japanese garden were arranged during the 2019 landscaping works. The project's authors aimed for a harmonious combination of the memorial sign and the surrounding nature of Khabarovsk district. Today it is a well-kept corner of Korfovsky, strikingly different from the ordinary village surroundings around it.

Getting there

The garden lies within the village of Korfovsky, within walking distance of the residential streets. The way to it runs along Arsenyeva Street to Shkolny Lane, from where a forest path begins that crosses the territory of the Bolshekhekhtsirsky Nature Reserve and leads to the memorial.