Large collection of rare camellias, local legend boost rural town in southwestern Japan
Flowering cherry trees have begun to bloom in many parts of Japan, but residents of Kusano Town of Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, are busy receiving people coming to see and enjoy various rare camellias grown in the area.
Kusano used to be a castle town, but it is now a largely rural area. The town organizes week-long events at the start of the camellia season in mid-March every year, but the area was even more excited this year, because a new facility has been built in a 220-million-yen project to better illustrate the charm of camellias. Built at a 2,400-square-meter site, the facility features a tall glass house which displays more than 100 original camellias collected from around Japan and from tropical and subtropical regions, including Vietnam and southern China. An adjacent garden has 160 cultivar camellia of 50 species planned along a promenade.
The facility, called the World Camellia Hall, leads visitors to a much broader garden via a lane lined by young camellia trees. The garden has 2,000 camellias of 500 cultivars, including those grown and developed in Western countries.
The garden, with an area of 3 hectares, was originally a mother tree nursery opened in the Meiji era. The camellias planned in the garden include “Kurume Camellias,” the locally developed camellias. The most famous of them is the “Masayoshi” camellia, which has big, mottled red petals. Local people boast of the camellia because its saplings were carried to Europe by a German physician and naturalist in 1830 and the species became known there in the name of “Donckelaeri.”
Guided tours were also organized for visitors to show them camellia gardens preserved at local people's homes, including those which have 150 to 300-year-old Masayoshi camellia trees.
Kusano and other districts of Kurume City, lying on the northern slope of the Minoh Mountains, have been known as a major production center of garden plants, including not only camellias but also azaleas and rhododendrons, over the years. An episode which links Kurume to camellias goes back to a sea battle between the two warring samurai clans of the Genji and the Heishi in 1185.
As the Heishi clan was finally defeated in the battle, Emperor Antoku, hailing from the Heishi family, who was then 5 years old, is said to have drowned himself in his grandmother's arms. His tomb exists beside a shrine built for his soul near the venue of the battle. But the legend says that the Emperor was rescued and, accompanied with a lady's maid, Azechi-no-tsubone, taken to a place near Kurume. He was grown up there and fell in love with a beautiful girl, named Tamae. When he took a stroll with the girl one day, he found camellias and appreciated their beauty.
Azechi lived at a hermitage near Emperor Antoku's former residence and prayed for his soul. The hermitage was later transformed to a shrine and this is said to be the predecessor of Kurume's sea disaster-related Suitengu Shrine. So, the shrine crest is in the shape of a camellia, local people say.
Because old people believe in the legend, and the legend combines with local people's passion for growing flowering trees, particularly camellias, Kusano is expected to continue to entertain flower-loving people in its calm landscape.
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