Tokyo, the current capital of Japan, is widely known as one of the most comfortable and livable cities in the world, offering not only excellent public safety and convenience, but also a remarkably low incidence of direct hits from major natural disasters, allowing residents to intimately experience the beauty of the four seasons: cherry blossoms in spring, lush green foliage in summer, vivid autumn leaves, and the crisp, clear skies of winter. However, if we wind back the clock of history by about four hundred years, this place was once a vast, untamed wetland stretching as far as the eye could see—a barren marshland far from ideal for human habitation, where rivers frequently flooded and clean drinking water was scarce. It was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ruler who brought an end to the turbulent Warring States period, who took on the massive project of transforming this unlivable wasteland into the world’s largest metropolis, and the foundation he chose for this urban design was the philosophy of Feng Shui and Onmyodo (traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology), an environmental science derived from ancient China that channels the fundamental energies of mother nature.
Tokugawa Ieyasu and his right-hand man, the genius ritual master Monk Tenkai, focused their attention on "Qi" (spiritual energy), the powerful earthly force flowing from Mount Fuji, which is widely considered the greatest power spot in Japan, and they built Edo Castle—now the Imperial Palace—precisely at the terminal point where this energy concentrates and bursts forth. Furthermore, they erected a powerful spiritual barrier across the entire city by positioning Kan'ei-ji Temple and Kanda Myojin Shrine in the northeast, the ominous direction known as the "Kimon" (Demon Gate) from which negative energy and disasters were believed to arrive, while placing Zojo-ji Temple and Hie Shrine in the southwest, the "Ura-Kimon" (Rear Demon Gate), to act as massive protective shields. By executing large-scale civil engineering projects that even altered the flow of local rivers, they meticulously controlled the natural currents so that this terrestrial energy would not escape the city bounds, and as a result, Edo rapidly transformed into a balanced and comfortable city teeming with vitality for its inhabitants.

This environment, dramatically enriched through Feng Shui, brought immense blessings not only to humans but also to the local plant life; in the city of Edo, where the energy of nature circulated seamlessly and abundant water flowed, a spectacular horticultural culture burst into bloom. From the middle to the late Edo period, countless people, ranging from high-ranking samurai to ordinary townspeople, became passionately devoted to cultivating potted plants such as bonsai, establishing a deeply ingrained custom of condensing and expressing the rich seasonal transitions of Edo and the grand vistas of nature within the confines of a single small pot. The refined aesthetics of bonsai, which have been faithfully passed down to modern artificial bonsai creations like "A-BONSAI," represent a traditional culture that could only achieve its unique evolution here because Tokugawa Ieyasu engineered the urban environment to its absolute pinnacle using the principles of Feng Shui.

The true resilience of Tokyo reveals itself in the aftermath of the profound tragedies that completely leveled the city, such as the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the firebombed devastation of World War II, from which Tokyo rose again and again with astonishing speed, much like a phoenix. No matter how many buildings were destroyed, the grand design of Feng Shui—the flow of earthly energy and the strategic placement of temples protected by our ancestors at the risk of their lives—was never broken, and this ancient wisdom continues to live on today, so much so that the modern JR Yamanote Line train loop is said to have been designed to form a new iron barrier around the Imperial Palace utilizing the kinetic energy of the passing trains. As a current resident living in Tokyo, when a gentle breeze suddenly brushes through the gaps of the concrete jungle and I encounter the sight of vibrant green trees and seasonal flowers blooming beautifully, I overlay this image with the figures of the people of Edo who once breathed life into a single potted plant on this very ground, and I cannot help but feel a profound sense of respect and gratitude for the wisdom and dedication of our ancestors who nurtured this once-barren swampland over more than four hundred years into such a comfortable city. I firmly believe that the city of Tokyo, constructed by revering the forces of nature and turning that energy into a perfect ally through Feng Shui, will continue to triumph over the challenges of any era, standing protected by an invisible, impenetrable barrier, and flourishing in perpetual prosperity for all eternity.