Greenhouse of the Hoshi University Medicinal Plant Garden (星薬科大学薬用植物園 温室)

The Hoshi medicinal plant garden was set up in 1941, when the Hoshi College of Pharmacy (星薬学専門学校, the university's predecessor) opened on its present site in the Ebara district of Shinagawa. According to the chronology published by the university, it then covered about 1.3 hectares and grew 1,117 species, 672 of them foreign medicinal plants. The following decades brought a long contraction. In March 1946 the occupation forces requisitioned the garden after the school building, and its plants were moved to part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's experiment station, now Rinshi no Mori Park in Meguro. The requisition ended in October 1949 with barracks built on the ground and the land badly damaged; once restored, the garden measured only 5,600 m².

The same chronology dates the building of the greenhouse to 1973. A women's dormitory (1976) reduced the area to about 3,300 m², then an institute of pharmaceutical chemistry (1986) and the widening of the road on the east side brought it down to 2,900 m². The garden nevertheless kept developing: in 1990 it imported foreign plants directly for the first time, after a survey trip to Indonesia; in 1991 it took part in the first "rare plants of the world" exhibition of the Japan Botanical Gardens Association; a leaflet for visitors was produced in 1996 and guided plant tours began in 1998. In 2003 the gate, the fence and the main path were rebuilt.

None of the texts read (the university's site, the Tokyu article, Wikipedia) describes the structure of the greenhouse: no architect, floor area or materials are published, and the only dating is the year 1973 in the chronology. The glazed covering is established by a photograph taken inside in 2013 by a visitor, in which a palm rises under a roof of transparent panels set on slender metal bars. An aerial view from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan shows, in the north-eastern part of the garden, a long roof with a pale grid pattern that matches this building; the identification rests on its position and deserves confirmation on site.

On the garden's official plan the greenhouse occupies the rear part, above the block of collection beds (標本園), with a boiler room at one end and the management building on the other side; the entrance is at the bottom of the plan, facing the ginkgo avenue. The 2013 visitor found it far from huge but very full, designed for research rather than for photography: the specimens are packed tightly and get in each other's way in front of the lens.

According to the university, the greenhouse gathers tropical medicinal plants; visitors may occasionally see spice-producing plants or plants carrying tropical fruit. All carry a label giving the name, the medicinal effect and the constituents. The photographs of the 2013 blog post show a vanilla (an orchid whose slender, bean-like pods give off a sweet smell), a rare palm labelled ピナンガクーリー whose upper trunk and leaf stalks are ivory-coloured, a cacao tree whose pods hang straight from the trunk, a star fruit tree whose cut fruit shows a star, a succulent with round fleshy leaves, a banana of the "sanjaku" variety (三尺バナナ), an African tulip tree that was not in flower, and a tree called ショウベンノキ, whose Japanese name recalls the foul-smelling sap of its cut twigs.

Outside the greenhouse the garden is divided into an arboretum, an aquatic garden, collection beds and a wild-plant garden. Its official images show in particular peony, vanilla, Japanese pepper, foxglove, balloon flower, safflower and bitter orange.

The greenhouse occupies the back of the garden. Visitors reach it by announcing their visit at the guard post beside the university's main gate and then following the avenue of ginkgo trees: the garden entrance is on the right. A 2013 visitor mentions a register to sign, with no further formality. The garden is small and the greenhouse modest; in winter it offers the most to see, since the open-ground plants are almost all dormant in February, according to the same visitor.

Togoshi-ginza station (Ikegami line) is about 8 minutes' walk from the university, and Musashi-koyama station (Meguro line) about 15 minutes from the main gate. The Tokyu article pairs this garden with four others along its lines, among them the Shibuya City Botanical Garden Fureai, which is also in this catalogue.