Tour the House
 Shofuso GardenThe garden around the Japanese House was designed by SANO Tansai to incorporate existing landscape elements into a sixteenth-seventeenth century style garden. The area is bordered by a high wall topped with ceramic tiles. Piercing the wall is a wooden gate, which opens onto a formal walkway leading to the main entrance to the house. Visitors are encouraged to stroll through the garden on flat stepping-stone pathways, to explore stone and wooden bridges, a stone pagoda donated by the city of Kyoto, and a life-size statue of Jizo, a Buddhist deity associated with the salvation of small children. Some 250 of the rocks decorating the garden were imported from Japan with the House in 1954. In the pond reside a dozen koi, brightly colored "golden carp" trained to come toward the house for feeding. Paths lead around the house and onto a small island in the pond, as well as to a bamboo grove behind the complex. Traditional plants of Japan, such as bamboo, pine, hinoki cypress, flowering plum, and azalea, are propagated in harmony with local species. Great care has been taken in the layout, landscaping, and cultivation of this garden in order to create in a limited space the impression of depth and great scale. The rocks, pond, and trees recall the mountains, streams, and forests of Japan. |
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