History
After the Meiji Restoration, the government pursued a policy of separation of Buddhism and Shinto (Shinbutsu bunri), and Shinto funerals became more common. This posed however a problem because until then most cemeteries had been property of Buddhist temples. The solution adopted was the opening of public burial grounds. In 1872, Meiji authorities confiscated a portion of TennÅ-ji and declared it a public Tokyo cemetery, the largest in the country at the time. In 1935 the name was changed from Yanaka Bochi to the present (Yanaka Reien).
Read more about this topic: Yanaka Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)