S P O T ／ SPOT-003

Goshikien (Five-Color Garden)

五色園ごしきえん

Somewhere in the forest-covered hills of Nisshin City, Japan's only religious theme park quietly pushes the boundary between Buddhist devotion and folk-art fever dream. Founded in 1934 by a Buddhist organization, Goshikien sprawls across more than 66 hectares of woodland, where roughly 100 life-sized concrete sculptures — the life's work of self-taught sculptor Asano Shōun — stand amid the trees like a frozen congregation. Shōun, who carved religious figures from concrete with a hypnotic intensity that has earned him the nickname "Japan's Gaudí," spent decades recreating scenes from the life of Shinran, the founder of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. The results are vivid, bold, and startlingly expressive: monks with eyes that seem to track you, devotees frozen in extremity, facial expressions hovering somewhere between agony, enlightenment, and something much harder to name. Whether Goshikien is sacred art or outsider art or the most spectacular B-kyū spot in Japan is a question that seems beside the point once you're standing in the woods with concrete saints looming over you. Entry is free — which feels impossible given the sheer scale and ambition of the place — making it a rare instance where the most surreal attraction in the prefecture is also the most accessible.