Occasionally, I might feel compelled by the sheer urban intensity of a walk beneath the Shuto Expressway, Tokyo's vast network of elevated toll roads. Such a journey on foot carries a pensive undertone. It is a self-effacing activity, directly interfacing with the city's most unyielding, pedestrian-unfriendly concrete landscapes. Along some segments, you can walk beneath the pillars of the Expressway, and at times, crossing footbridges brings you close enough to touch its underside and feel the rumble of one million daily vehicles passing above.

Those moods are rare, though; for the most part, I'm inclined to avoid the Expressway. During walks through areas interconnected by its span, I usually seek quieter paths one or two streets behind the main road. Still, given the Expressway's three elevated ring roads and twelve radial routes that fan out from Tokyo's centre, confronting it occasionally is inevitable.

On a recent walk from Roppongi towards Shirokane between meetings, I diverted down one such parallel path named Nagasaka, meaning 'long slope'. The descent, marked by a scattering of restaurants, bars, and clubs near Roppongi, soon thins into mixed office and residential buildings. It skirts around a busy segment of Azabudai-dōri and the C1 inner circular loop of the Shuto Expressway that arches overhead—a sight of congestion at almost any hour.

In due course, the path converges with Azabudai-dōri, and walking along the main road becomes necessary for a while. Upon reaching this stretch, I noticed a tiny park occupying a corner plot spanning merely 98 m². The space consists of paving tiles encircling a stately keyaki, or Japanese zelkova tree, complemented by a blue metal workout station, a bench, and four seats. A locker stands nearby, and there is no grass. Only dirt and gravel cover the concrete below. Meticulously maintained hedges frame the perimeter, masking the metal fencing beneath a veil of green. It might be one of the smallest, most sparsely equipped Tokyo play parks I have encountered.

Despite its diminutive size and minimal equipment, this park is well-kept, with every item serving a purpose. Dirt- or sand-covered ground is common across municipal parks in Japanese cities; these surfaces are easier to maintain and offer little opportunity for urban weeds to thrive. This pragmatic choice trades aesthetic appeal for practicality. The locker contains emergency supplies, hinting at the role of small parks like these as evacuation points and firebreaks. The bench, designed with a curved backrest, invites stretching, possibly after a few sets of pull-ups at the workout station.

The proud keyaki tree at the park's centre provides greenery and shade even in this heavily concreted area. Alongside sakura and ginkgo trees, keyakis are a mainstay in Tokyo's landscaping due to their resilience in urban settings. They withstand pollution and compacted soil and are resistant to disease and pests, granting them longevity in the challenging conditions of city life. We're all drawn to sakura in spring and ginkgo trees in autumn, but consider admiring a keyaki on your next visit to the city.

This park seems to be more of a rest spot for adults about to tackle the incline towards Roppongi than a play area for children. Walk any considerable distance in Tokyo, and you'll notice relatively few benches to relieve weary legs. The absence of public seating mirrors tough-love principles in Japanese urban design, favouring practical use of space and preserving social order over individual comfort in communal areas.

Despite Tokyo's walkability, the absence of resting spots outside commercial venues subtly promotes short breaks for consuming goods and services. In central locations, this issue is acute enough that the Tokyo Bench Project, a machizukuri, or 'town creation', community effort, focuses on adding more benches along Chūō-dōri from Ginza to Ueno, aiming to bring about what they term a 'ground-level revolution'.

And so, small parks with a bench or two are a welcome sight whether or not children accompany you. Still, a plaque displaying the park's name, Nagasakaue Asobiba—with asobiba translating to 'playground'—suggests it would facilitate children's play. Yet, play equipment is notably missing, and this near to the Expressway seems no place to play.

Similarly austere asobiba are scattered throughout the city. In 2018, a Twitter user shared a patch of artificial grass flanked by two towering buildings. The only playground equipment present was a single, desolate panda ride. The caption read: 'Quite a stoic park, not for the half-hearted', wryly acknowledging the minimalist nature of the setup. It suggests that only those with a serious commitment to imagination could consider this a playground, earning it the title 'saddest playground in the world'. One reply showed a similar park with two forlorn play items—a red tomato and an orange carrot—each positioned on a square green mat atop the asphalt. The scene was framed by caution tape and traffic cones. It resembled an abstract urban installation more than a child's play area.

Often, the setting is less pathetic. Photographers and bloggers have curated collections showcasing Tokyo's more charming retro playground installations. Lee Chapman exhibits an array of retro delights on his website, including a giant robot from a bygone era, a concrete UFO hailing from the 1960s, and a nostalgic push-button telephone slide. Similarly, Tokyo Fox hosts an impressive assortment of playground structures, featuring various figures from animals and dinosaurs to mythological creatures.

Yet, Nagasakaue Asobiba has nothing. A report by the Tokyo Shimbun has pointed out a significant reduction in playground apparatus across the 23 special wards. Wards blame the stringent 2002 safety standards set by the Japan Park Facilities Association. These regulations require substantial 'safety areas' around play equipment to mitigate accident risks, a mandate that proves challenging for compact city parks where space is at a premium. The safety area required increases according to how high the play equipment is off the ground. This backdrop might explain the lonesome carrot and the desolate panda, born perhaps from a design brief that demanded low-lying solutions.

Before the Meiji era (1868–1912), the landscape of Tokyo was largely without urban parks as we understand them today—as green public spaces designed for leisure and the appreciation of nature. Instead, community interactions centred around street life and the quarters of residential alleys. Shrines often served the recreational purpose of parks, yet their sanctity as private, religious spaces meant they did not equate to public green areas. Some temple grounds and estates of feudal lords, including Ueno Park and Shinjuku Gyoen, eventually became public parks, but the spread of urban parks in Japan remained slow, and during the 20th century, amidst rapid urbanisation, space for parks was not a priority.

Present-day Tokyo still struggles to a degree in this area. Christian Dimmer, Associate Professor for Urban Studies at Waseda University, points out that although the lack of green space in Japan is often lamented, it stands in contrast to thousands of hectares of valuable asphalted land, which often languish, serving as car parks whilst awaiting redevelopment, a process that can take years. It got me wondering whether the forlorn panda and lonesome carrot aren't placeholders for future commercial development.

In Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology, Jinnai Hidenobu elaborates on how, during the 1920s, city planner Ishihara Kenji, inspired by time spent in the United States, introduced the concept of 'vest-pocket parks' to Tokyo as part of the reconstruction efforts after the Great Kantō Earthquake. In line with urban densification in Japan, private gardens became scarce, and the increase in vehicle traffic made traditional street play unsafe for children. As a result, pocket parks emerged as vital communal spaces. Urban planners were encouraged to transcend traditional Japanese landscaping whilst refraining from merely replicating foreign designs. Jinnai's publication includes plans and photographs of the first series of pocket parks, which, although not as small, bear the fundamental characteristics of today's compact, minimalist playgrounds in Tokyo.

Marieluise Jonas, programme director in Landscape Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne, in an examination of the city's urban weeds for Small Tokyo, reports that Tokyo's 14.6 million inhabitants have, on average, less than 5 m² of open space per person. Additionally, the standard 150 m² plot designated for single-family homes often allows for minimal, if any, garden space, sometimes reducing these areas to mere centimetres in width. This context demonstrates the significance of even a modest 98 m² public green space within walking distance of home.

In the same publication, Heike Rahmann, a landscape architect and urban researcher, posits that Japanese culture inherently values the concept of smallness, viewing spatial limitations as catalysts for inventive use of confined areas. She references the traditional art forms of bonkei (miniature landscapes), bonsai (miniature trees), and tsubo-niwa (compact gardens and courtyards) as emblematic of this philosophy in Japanese landscape design.

Rahmann proposes that tsubo-niwa built within the confines of homes, eateries, and lodgings offer an analogy for Japan's petite public parks. Characterised by their small scale, tsubo-niwa provide tranquil, visually appealing vistas viewable from inside the building, merging indoor and outdoor environments. Their careful orchestration within limited bounds encompasses the aesthetic virtues of minimalism, equilibrium, and concord. Rahmann likens the intimate spacing of buildings and miniature parks to the relationship between a tsubo-niwa and its enclosing architecture.

Nagasakaue Asobiba is no tsubo-niwa, and Rahmann concedes that Japan's small parks often diverge far from this traditional concept. However, contemplating the meticulous cultivation inherent in tsubo-niwa, or the artistry involved in pruning miniature bonsai trees, offers an enjoyable perspective on the management of confined spaces within the metropolis.

My first home in Japan was small. A narrow staircase from a shopping street branched into a series of tiny, private guest rooms. Most inhabitants were travellers. In contrast, I had chosen to rent one of its smallest and most affordable rooms for three months to launch my Tokyo life. Living in confined spaces wasn't new to me, given my previous London accommodation was a converted cupboard under the stairs, but this room was an outlier—surprisingly small even to my Japanese friends living in one-room student apartments. I soon became grateful for small local play parks to walk to for a break from my extra-small room.

In Nagasakaue Asobiba's case, its proximity to the Shuto Expressway invariably makes the space seem even smaller. It's so close you could toss an empty can from the nearby vending machine onto the C1 Route. I might have guessed that the Expressway encroached upon the park, overshadowing it and depriving the community of a peaceful open space. Yet, the park was opened in 1976, fifteen years after the C1 Route. It was a deliberate decision to perch a park here, and indeed, there is a kind of subcategory of Expressway-adjacent play parks beneath tunnels and beside footbridges across the capital.

The setting brings to mind shakkei, a principle from 17th-century China adopted into Japanese garden aesthetics that translates to 'borrowed scenery'. This technique integrates surrounding features such as distant mountains, rivers, and forests into the garden's composition, allowing the designer to curate the view by selectively revealing desired elements. In the confines of Nagasakaue Asobiba, I can't help hoping that the park's creator, when presented with this modest parcel of land and its challenging environs, chose coolly to incorporate the roaring Shuto Expressway into their plan by way of shakkei.

Nagasakaue Asobiba reflects aspects of Tokyo's nuanced dance with public spaces, illustrating how small details can inform our understanding of the metropolis. This unassuming park provides a momentary retreat from the urban expanse. It offers safety and suggests the resilience woven into Tokyo's urban landscape, holding stories of the city's heritage and the forces that continue to shape its development. Not least, it provides an unexpected vantage point for contemplating the Shuto Expressway's complexity. I don't advocate for a special visit to this hidden gem during a Tokyo holiday, but it serves as a way of seeing and learning the city.

It may be far-fetched for some, unable to look beyond the perplexing case of the panda and lonely carrot, but as someone who has chosen to receive this newsletter, I trust you'll receive and consider this perspective.

Until we meet in a miniature playground in Tokyo,

AJ

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