Seibien

Shengmei Garden is located in Hiraizumi City, Aomori Prefecture. It is a private garden. It was built by the 24th generation of Qingdou Shengmei, the 24th generation of the Qingdou family of the Tsugaru local noble family. It is said that the designer is the master of the garden. The garden took nine years and was completed in 1911. The scene in Hayao Miyazaki's animation "Arietty Who Borrows Things" is based on this garden. Shengmeiyuan is also widely known with this animation. From the inside of the courtyard, the building looks almost exactly like the scene in the animation. Shengmei Garden is actually not big and consists of three parts. One is Shengmei Pavilion, which is actually the owner's residence. This Western-style building consists of two floors. The lower floor is Japanese-style and the upper floor is Western-style. The second is the Imperial Treasure Hall, which is on the side of Shengmei Hall. It is also a family ancestral temple built by Qingto Shengmei, which enshrines two Japanese national treasures. One of them is the "King Kong Realm Tathagata Buddha" carved 700 years ago, and the other is a screen of "Sakura and Peacock", which are very large lacquer paintings in Japan, and they are all very precious cultural relics. The third is the courtyard. The courtyard of Shengmei Garden is a Japanese-style courtyard, with rockeries and ponds, and the magnificent scenery of the Tsugaru Plain can be seen from afar.