Yoyogi Park
park
Yoyogi Park (代々木公園, Yoyogi kōen) is a park in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It is located adjacent to Harajuku Station and Meiji Shrine in Yoyogikamizonochō. The park is a popular Tokyo destination, especially on Sundays when it is used as a gathering place for Japanese rock music fans, jugglers, comedians, martial arts clubs, cosplayers and other subculture and hobby groups. In spring, thousands of people visit the park to enjoy the cherry blossom during hanami. The landscaped park has picnic areas, bike paths, cycle rentals, public sport courts, and a dog run.
History
Yoyogi Park stands on the site from where the first successful powered aircraft flight in Japan took place by Captain Yoshitoshi Tokugawa on 19 December 1910. The area later became an army parade ground and training area, including gun training, which scared the famous dog Hachikō. From September 1945, the site became a U.S. officers housing area known as Washington Heights during the Allied occupation of Japan.
The area was used for the 1964 Summer Olympics housing the main Olympic Village and the Yoyogi National Gymnasium. The distinctive building, which was designed by Kenzo Tange, hosted swimming and diving, with an annex for basketball.
“Yoyogi Park” enters the record as park. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yoyogi, Park and park can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Yoyogi Park” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Yoyogi, Park and park provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1204253. VIAF identifies the subject as 252092689. Authority coordinates are 35.672, 139.698. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1945 and 1964.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Yoyogi Park” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.