Lighting the Path Campaign

Each spring, Hakone illuminates our 60+ cherry trees in bloom for guests to enjoy a spectacular evening in our historic garden.

Our annual Hanami Night Viewing event brings the ancient tradition of cherry blossom viewing from Japan to the Bay Area, drawing up to 15,000 visitors in just 3 weeks.

To expand our mission of promoting cultural exchange and give visits a new type of enchanting night in the garden, Hakone Foundation also held our first-ever Moon Festival to showcase how different Asian cultures celebrate the autumn moon.

This inaugural event, that we hope to make annual, also honored Hakone’s historic connection to harvest moon, allowing guests to experience the views from our Moon Viewing House and Moon Bridge - intentionally designed in 1917 to highlight it.

At the heart of Japanese landscaping is the tenet that a garden should be engaged with beyond simply admiring its beauty. Hakone evening events such as the above, along with our annual popular Toro Nagashi event, embrace this philosophy, offering meaningful cultural experiences and a connection to nature’s serenity found nowhere else in Northern California.

The cost to rent the lights required to illuminate the garden and ensure safety is $20,000 per event. This year, Hakone is investing in its own professional lighting equipment to ensure the continuation of these special evenings, while expanding our ability to offer additional night programming.

Our $50,000 goal in this Phase 1 of our Lighting the Path campaign allows us to:

have ownership of 100+ waterproof event up-lights to properly illuminate our garden
buy new path lights and lanterns for safety

In latter phases of this campaign, we will upgrade the permanent lighting around the pond and hope to illuminate other parts of our estate that currently do not have electricity such as the bamboo garden and Shogestu-en.

We invite you to help illuminate Hakone’s garden, lighting the path for its future. Your gift today ensures the community can explore the tranquility of the garden at night now, and for generations to come.

As a living museum, and one of the oldest U.S. Japanese gardens open to the public, Hakone Estate and Gardens is a bridge across cultures and generations. Your contribution towards lighting the garden has a lasting impact, planting new seeds for Hakone to bloom bigger than ever before!

To support, download this form to mail with your check, or donate online here.

For questions, contact Executive Director Meredith Lee at meredith.lee@hakonegardens.org .