★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
Sankeien Garden
The year is 1914, and workers are carefully dismantling a 457-year-old pagoda in Kyoto, piece by numbered piece, preparing for an impossible journey to Yokohama. They're part of silk merchant Sankei Hara's wild dream to create the ultimate Japanese garden by collecting historic buildings from across the country. Here in Honmokusannotani, you're standing in what became Japan's first "outdoor museum" when it opened in 1906. That three-story pagoda looming above you? It's now the oldest wooden structure of its kind in eastern Japan. But Sankei didn't just collect buildings - he collected artists too. This 175,000-square-meter garden became the unofficial headquarters of Meiji period culture, where painters and poets would gather in pavilions that once housed shoguns. The hidden secret? That elegant Chōshūkaku pavilion tucked among the maples actually belonged to Tokugawa Iemitsu himself back in 1623.
Did You Know?
- Sankeien Garden is a living architectural museum, featuring over a dozen historic structures—including a three-story pagoda from Kyoto dating to 1457 and a former samurai residence—each carefully relocated from different parts of Japan to create a unique cultural tapestry within the garden.
- Founded by silk merchant and art patron Sankei Hara, the garden became a vibrant hub for Meiji-period artists and intellectuals, fostering the arts and serving as a gathering place for Japan’s cultural elite during the early 20th century.
- Despite suffering severe damage during World War II, Sankeien was meticulously restored after being donated to the city of Yokohama, and today ten of its structures are designated Important Cultural Properties by the Japanese government—a rare concentration of heritage in a single garden.