The Japanese cemetery of Hougang: 910 gravestones and a story Singapore keeps quiet

In a residential neighbourhood of Hougang, in north-east Singapore, a gate on Chuan Hoe Avenue leads to the largest Japanese cemetery in Southeast Asia. There are 910 gravestones spread over about three hectares, among tall trees and bougainvillea pergolas. Few tourists seek it out, partly because it is a twenty-minute walk from the nearest station and on no classic city itinerary. Yet its history explains a chapter that is rarely told in Singapore.

The origins

The cemetery was authorised by the British colonial government on 26 June 1891. Its founder was Tagajiro Fukaki, a brothel owner, who donated a rubber plantation so it could become the burial place of the young Japanese women who had died in poverty. They were the karayuki-san, girls who had left or been sold from late nineteenth-century Japan towards Asia, many from the Amakusa islands in Kumamoto prefecture, and who ended up as prostitutes in the colonial ports. The name means, literally, "young lady gone overseas". Many graves are plain, with no name carved: the very reason the cemetery came into being.

The war memorials

Over time the place became something more than a burial ground for forgotten émigrées. Behind the central part are the war memorials, built in 1947 by Japanese prisoners who had surrendered after the conflict; behind one of them are gathered the ashes of some ten thousand fallen. Here too rests Yamamoto Otokichi (1818-1867), regarded as the first Japanese resident of Singapore, a castaway and later an interpreter. And here is the tomb of Terauchi Hisaichi, field marshal at the head of the Japanese Southern Army, who died in 1946: a presence that makes the place, for Singapore, anything but neutral, given the memory of the 1942-45 occupation. The cemetery does not hide this ambivalence; it displays it one gravestone at a time.

What you see

What you see, in concrete terms. Orderly rows of stones of every size, some worn away, others with characters still legible; the obelisks and steles of the memorials; panels recounting some of the figures buried. The vegetation is the second attraction: the bougainvillea arches, often mistaken for cherry blossom, are at their best around mid-March and mid-September, when the flowering is most intense. A litchi tree protected as heritage also grows in the park. It is still an active memorial site, so the obvious rule applies: low voices, respect, no rowdiness among the graves.

How to get there

How to get there. The address is 22 Chuan Hoe Avenue, postal code 544880. The reference MRT station is Serangoon (North East and Circle lines): from there it is about twenty minutes on foot, or you take buses 43, 70, 70M or 116, getting off at the stop nearest the park. By car you arrive easily from the Central Expressway (CTE) and park along Chuan Hoe Avenue; with Grab you need only say "Japanese Cemetery Park". Admission is free and the park is open every day, roughly from 7 to 7 (some sources report 8 to 6.30: better not to count on the last half hour). Do not rely on toilets on site; bring water and a hat, because shade is not lacking but the humid heat is. To eat before or after, the NEX and Hougang Mall shopping centres are a short distance away. Early morning and late afternoon are the best moments, both for the light and for the temperature.