The Flower Pots Behind Japan's Garden Culture

Visitors to Tokyo’s traditional neighborhoods, like Tsukishima or Nezu, are often struck by a surprising sight: rows of potted plants displayed boldly—and without any barrier—along the edges of private homes. This phenomenon, commonly called street gardening, can catch foreigners off guard.

It is a curious space where the boundaries between “public” and “private” are blurred, and it also reflects Japan’s famously safe streets. Through integrating plants into daily life, people experience nature and the changing seasons in an everyday context—a quintessentially Japanese scene.

Yet this is far removed from the formal traditions of ikebana or bonsai. Instead, it represents a casual, familiar way for ordinary people to engage with plants in their everyday lives.

In fact, the practice of incorporating potted plants into daily life began long before Japan adopted Western-style modernization. It traces back to the Edo period (1603–1868 CE), when the country was still governed by samurai. One crucial factor in spreading and developing this habit was none other than the flower pot itself.

In this blog, we will explore the popularization of gardening in Japan and the deep, enduring connection between ordinary people and the humble flower pots.

Before the Edo period began in the seventeenth century, following more than a hundred years of brutal civil war, cultivating plants for purely aesthetic enjoyment was a pursuit reserved almost exclusively for the upper classes: court nobles, samurai, and those of similar standing.

That tradition carried forward into the early Edo period, when horticulture remained primarily the domain of the warrior class. At the apex stood the shogun, the supreme commander of the Tokugawa shogunate that governed the entire country, and beneath him the daimyo, feudal lords who administered their respective domains as extensions of shogunal authority. The undisputed center of this world was Edo, present-day Tokyo, where the shogunate had established its seat of power.

Of the fifteen Tokugawa shoguns, the first three were especially devoted to horticulture, and their enthusiasm rippled outward. The daimyo, ever attentive to the tastes of those above them, threw themselves into cultivating ornamental plants with considerable energy. Sprawling gardens took shape within Edo Castle, where the shoguns resided, and throughout the grand daimyo estates known as daimyo yashiki, the residences where feudal lords lived and conducted their affairs during their mandatory stays in the capital.

In time, farming households on the outskirts of Edo began growing trees specifically to supply these gardens with variety and visual interest. Specialist nurseries and landscape contractors emerged alongside them, offering trees, shrubs, and flowering plants to daimyo and wealthy merchants alike.

As Edo was rapidly transformed into a major political capital, it was quietly taking on another identity as well—a city shaped, in no small part, by its gardens.

Ordinary Edo residents shared the same deep affinity for nature and plants as the shoguns, daimyo, and wealthy merchants above them. They admired the horticultural pursuits of the ruling and moneyed classes, but the realities of city life stood in the way: most commoners lived in cramped quarters with no room for a garden of their own.

Instead, they sought out beauty elsewhere. Private botanical gardens scattered across the city, along with the temple and shrine grounds that doubled as celebrated flower-viewing spots, drew crowds of visitors eager to experience the changing flora of each season. At these destinations, specialist growers sold their cultivated plants in ceramic pots ready to take home as souvenirs. Potted plants were a revelation for people living in tight spaces: a single pot could sit on a windowsill, in a sliver of a front yard, or tucked into a narrow alleyway. For the urban commoner, this was the entry point into horticulture.

The reach of the potted plant extended even further down the social ladder to the small traders, craftsmen, and day laborers renting rooms in the back alleys of the city. They bought plants from street vendors and traveling peddlers, and found genuine pleasure in tending them at home.

Through this gradual democratization, Edo grew into a city where gardening crossed every boundary of class, age, and gender, from the shogun in his castle to the laborer in his rented room. The plants people favored reflected the full range of what was possible: in pots, fukujuso (pheasant's eye), sakuraso (Japanese primrose), and asagao (morning glory); in the ground, cherry, camellia, plum, peony, azalea, chrysanthemum, and maple, though plum apparently found its way into pots as well. Two festivals still held annually in Tokyo trace their roots directly to this Edo-era gardening boom: the Iriya Asagao Matsuri, a summer morning glory market, and the Sugamo Nakasendo Kiku Matsuri, an autumn chrysanthemum exhibition.

The craze didn't stay contained to Edo. It spread across the country, taking root in different forms as each region developed its own horticultural character. This nationwide embrace of gardening was remarkable enough to stop foreign visitors in their tracks. The Scottish botanist Robert Fortune (1812–1880) was among those who arrived in Japan during this period and came away astonished—not only by the breadth of the culture, but by the sight of ordinary people making full use of every available space around their homes to grow plants. He apparently noted that this spoke to a remarkably high level of cultural sophistication. One might wonder whether the rojo engei—the spontaneous "street gardening" seen in Tokyo today—has its roots not in any recent trend, but in the potted plants of the Edo period all along.

So what exactly were the flower pots that made gardening accessible to ordinary Edo residents who had no room for a proper garden?

In terms of materials, ceramics, porcelain, and earthenware appear to have been the most common. Judging by paintings from the period, small pots, ones that could be held comfortably in one hand, seem to have been the norm.

Edo-period flower pots also fall into two broad categories based on how they were made. The first type consisted of repurposed vessels: bowls, jars, and similar containers originally intended for other uses, later adapted for plants by drilling a drainage hole in the bottom. The second type was purpose-built from the outset, produced specifically as flower pots, with the drainage hole incorporated during manufacture.

The repurposed variety began appearing around the early eighteenth century, in the mid-Edo period. Purpose-built pots then became widespread from roughly the mid-eighteenth century onward. The prevailing view is that as ordinary people's enthusiasm for gardening grew, demand outpaced what repurposed containers could supply, making it commercially worthwhile to manufacture dedicated pots as a product in their own right.

Aesthetically, too, there was a clear divide. Wealthier buyers favored elaborately crafted pots glazed in a range of colors, decorative objects meant to complement the plant and delight the eye as part of a unified composition. For everyday consumers, plain, unadorned pots were the standard: practical vessels that retained the natural texture of the clay, with little or no ornamentation.

These pots were produced in several distinct regions. Kyoto was one center of production, as were Seto and Mino in central Honshu, both long-established as premier ceramics-producing areas. In Edo itself, the kilns appear to have been concentrated near present-day Imado in Taito Ward, in the vicinity of Asakusa.

The flower pot did more than democratize gardening; it also drove a remarkable leap in horticultural sophistication.

One striking example is sokuse saibai, the forced cultivation of plants inside karamurou— paper-screened greenhouse structures—where pots proved indispensable for moving plants freely between different growing conditions. Cherry blossoms, plum flowers, and fukujuso coaxed into bloom well ahead of their natural season were prized for their rarity and came to be regarded as auspicious, making them popular as good-luck offerings.

Another development was the cultivation of naturally occurring mutant plant varieties that appeared with unusual forms, whether stumbled upon growing wild outdoors or emerging spontaneously in the course of raising plants from seed. The practice of transplanting these curiosities into pots began among the samurai class before spreading to the general population, eventually igniting something close to a mass craze. The plants that captured people's imagination ranged from morning glories and primroses grown for their flowers, to omoto (Rohdea japonica), a foliage plant admired for its dwarf growth habit and the yellow or white fu (variegated markings) that appeared on its leaves. Some of these specimens changed hands at steep prices, driven by outright speculation.

In the world of mutant cultivation, the pot itself became a tool for enhancing a plant's perceived value. Enthusiasts gathered regularly to hold appreciation contests, examining one another's specimens in close detail and ranking them against each other. What was being judged, however, was not the plant alone, but the overall evaluation took in the owner's aesthetic sensibility and skill as a grower, pot selection included. Competitors accordingly lavished as much attention on choosing the right vessel as on cultivating the plant itself. The most celebrated pots to emerge from this culture were omoto-bachi—richly colored, elaborately patterned pots created specifically for displaying omoto—whose vivid designs perfectly embodied the spirit of the age.

Looking at omoto-bachi as they appear in Edo-period paintings, the artistic quality and sheer range of their designs are genuinely arresting. A well-chosen pot did not merely set off the omoto to best advantage; it must have deepened the owner's attachment to the plant itself.

When the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in 1868, ending roughly 265 years of centralized rule, Japan entered the Meiji era (1868–1912 CE) and set out, with deliberate urgency, to remake itself along Western lines.

As trade with foreign nations expanded, a wide array of imported plants took root in Japanese soil: tulips, hyacinths, pansies, and many others. Fruit cultivation, previously underdeveloped in Japan, was introduced in imitation of Western agricultural practice, and Japanese people encountered for the first time horticulture not as a leisure pursuit but as an industry.

The highly specialized, meticulously cultivated gardening culture that had flourished in the Edo period began, gradually, to recede. One likely factor was the disappearance of the samurai class itself, the very group that had pioneered and sustained horticultural culture throughout the Edo period, which vanished as an institution along with the shogunate. As the country modernized, the intricate, connoisseur-driven world of Edo horticulture slowly lost its footing.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Japan emerged from postwar recovery and hit the peak of its rapid economic growth, large residential apartment complexes were being built across the country at a furious pace. It is often observed that people turn to gardening for relief when urban life becomes crowded and stressful, and Japan was no exception. In city apartment blocks, a practice known as beranda engei, or balcony gardening, took hold, and the dominant mode of home cultivation gradually shifted from garden beds to container planting. The timing was fortunate: lightweight, durable, and inexpensive plastic pots and planters were entering the market at precisely this moment, and their affordability helped drive the spread of balcony gardening considerably.

The Japanese have long been drawn to the natural world. For centuries, they have found ways to bring wild trees, grasses, and flowers, the kind that grow untended on hillsides and in fields, into their daily lives, whether through ikebana flower arranging or more hands-on gardening. The most recent catalyst for a surge in this impulse was the COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived in Japan in the winter of 2020.

As people spent more time at home and social interaction shrank to almost nothing, many turned to plants for solace. Easy-to-keep houseplants and succulents flew off shelves, and the trend has shown no signs of fading even now that the pandemic is behind us.

According to a survey by one of Japan's major gardening conglomerates, demand has been shifting in recent years toward rare and unusual varieties, plants with distinctive forms or uncommon foliage. With succulents in particular, there is a growing tendency among people in their teens and twenties to choose them as their very first plant. What draws this younger generation in, the survey suggests, is the visual pairing of the plant itself with its pot, a combination they prize for its kawaii, or cuteness.

Potted gardening became a truly popular pastime during the Edo period, when the culture spread beyond the aristocracy to ordinary townspeople. Since then, it has never really left, adapting itself to each new era while remaining a quiet constant in Japanese life. When the pandemic hit, and people once again sought comfort in greenery, they were, without quite knowing it, reaching for the same remedy that Edo-period city dwellers had reached for centuries earlier. Seen in that light, those long-ago gardeners feel less like distant historical figures and more like kindred spirits.

Whatever form it takes next, this culture of cultivation will no doubt keep offering what it always has: a modest but genuinely nourishing happiness.