Hibiya Park

This guide to Hibiya Park in Tokyo opens on September 5, 1905, when a crowd of thousands found the gates chained shut ahead of a protest over the peace treaty that had just ended the war with Russia. It follows what happened when police tried to hold those gates, then steps back to the park's own origins as Japan's first Western-style park, opened just two years earlier and designed by a forester named Honda Seiroku. Look for the old gingko tree still standing on the grounds as you walk through.