Illustrated Masterpiece Architecture Tour with Hiroshi Miyazawa & the Heritage Business Lab
Episode 4

In this fourth installment of the "Illustrated Masterpiece Architecture Tour" series, we visited Murin-an Garden, a nationally designated site of scenic beauty located at the foot of Higashiyama, Kyoto, on the approach to Nanzenji Temple. This is the villa of Aritomo Yamagata (1838-1922), a Meiji and Taisho era politician who also served as Prime Minister of Japan. It was built between 1894 and 1895. The Kyoto City Zoo and the Okazaki cultural facilities zone (e.g. the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art) are located nearby.

The entire facility consists of a garden and three buildings: the main building, a Western-style house, and a teahouse. The garden was created by Jihei Ogawa VII (1860-1933), and is considered a modern Japanese garden masterpiece. A legendary landscape architect regarded as a pioneer of modern Japanese gardens, Jihei Ogawa received detailed instructions from Yamagata for Murin-an. It is said that Yamagata allowed Ogawa's talent to blossom.

In this episode of the series, the garden takes center stage, while architecture plays a supporting role. Murin-an may not be familiar to people in the Kanto (greater Tokyo) area. Aritomo Yamagata built three residences named Murin-an over the course of his life. The first was a grass hermitage in Shimonoseki, Choshu, Yamagata's hometown. This is the origin of the Murin-an name, which literally means "so rural that you can't find a nearby house to tell the neighbors about your visit.”

The second-generation Murin-an was a villa in Kiyamachi Nijo, Kyoto (now called Ganko Takasegawa Nijoen). The third-generation facility is here in front of Nanzenji approach in Kyoto. It is said that Yamagata's decision to build the third Murin-an in this particular location was due to movements in the political and business worlds to develop the area around Nanzenji Shimogawara as a villa area. He seems like a scary politician, Mr. Nishizawa. “Anyway, please take a look.” He seemed confident that I would definitely like it. Let's go in.

As soon as we entered the west entrance, we found the two-story wooden main building (both the architect and the builder remain unknown). We went up to the entrance of the main building, walked around the tsuboniwa garden and entered the tatami room on the east side, at which point I couldn't help but exclaim, “Oh!”

The garden that stretches out before your eyes doesn’t have the dense greenery and rugged rocks often found in Japanese gardens. Instead, the long and narrow middle area that stretches from east to west is almost completely covered with grass. The surface of the lawn features subtle undulations that cannot be called proper hills, along with a stream that flows gently between them. The stones on the ground are flat. It is a peaceful landscape, like a satoyama (mountain village landscape). I wonder if this is what Mr. Nishizawa meant when he said, "Aritomo Yamagata was a gentle man.”

Saki Yamada, General Manager of the Intellectual Property Planning Department at Ueyakato Landscape, showed us around. When you look at it now, it looks like the natural elements have been there for a long time. But the whole area used to be fields and pine woods. I can see that's why they were able to create this kind of sightline. Had it been a forest, it would have been impossible. Said Ms. Yamada: "It was very rare in Kyoto at that time to use a lawn as the main object of view in a Japanese garden.”

The facility is owned by the city of Kyoto, but since 2016 it has been managed and operated by Ueyakato Landscape, under a “designated manager” system. The entrance fee is 600 yen. If you have come all this way, I recommend having tea in the tatami room. An admission ticket with a cup of tea and sweets is 1,600 yen.

It's nice to look down from the second floor of the main building. You can rent this room for a time and have it all to yourself.

“Some people rent this place for a day and read a book while looking out at the garden," said Ms. Yamada. Hmm, that's extravagant.

In my opinion, I think this garden was designed with the priority placed on being viewed from the building. If you don't want to be bothered, you can enjoy 80% of the charm of the garden just by looking at it from inside the cool confines of the main building instead of strolling through the garden. It is, in a manner of speaking, “a garden as an architectural experience.” In this sense, it is appropriate for this series of articles entitled "Masterpiece Architecture Tour.”

One of the reasons why I think so is due to the layout of the garden. From the main building, the front (west) side is open to the lawn. As you move to the back (east), tall trees come up from both sides (north and south). This is probably to emphasize the sense of perspective at the spatially limited site. And above the east side greenery, the Higashiyama ridgeline offers a response to the perspective of the garden.

The second is the shape of the roof of the main building second floor as seen from the garden. It looks as if the north side of the hipped roof has been cut off vertically.

It is hard to believe that any master builder would make such an oddly shaped roof right from the start. This is probably because he made the tsuboniwa either during or after the main building construction. The reason why he wanted to build a tsuboniwa so badly is probably because he wanted to have a glimpse of the garden from the entrance through it. That's how confident Yamagata was about the view from the west.

In order to enjoy 100% or 120% of the charm of the place, I’d like to take a walk in the garden.

The "manners" pertinent to Japanese gardens, such as stepping stones, gravel paths, and boundaries, are too profound for me to explain as an outsider. Please ask the staff who guide you there. However, even if you aren’t aware of such manners, there are many things to discover for architecture lovers.

For example, the way the water flows. Water intake from Lake Biwa Canal is at the east end of the site; water from there enters like a waterfall all at once, then spreads out like a pond on a gentle slope, becoming a narrow stream near the main building. The pond is not visible from the tatami room of the main building, which may induce you to want to take a walk in the garden.

The water depths of the pond and the stream are surprisingly shallow. You can see the bottom of the water everywhere. I was wondering how neither had succumbed to becoming inundated, when Ms. Yamada informed me about them. She told me that this is because the gardeners frequently use brooms to remove the mud. The bottom of the river is made not of soil but of mortar. At first glance, the place looks like a peaceful regional landscape, but it is actually a well-thought out garden that effectively displays a limited amount of water.

I am a cynical person, so I do not know if Yamagata was a "gentle person" or not. However, I do know that Yamagata had an extraordinary sense of architecture. Perhaps he would have made a name for himself if he had become an architect.

By the way, Murin-an is a cultural asset designated as a "National Site of Scenic Beauty,” but the operator, Ueyakato Landscape, has been awarded the Good Design Award 2020 and the Japan Institute of Landscape Architects Award 2021. What does this mean when the place was built in the Meiji era?

　 The Good Design Award and the Japan Institute of Landscape Architects Award were both given to Murin-an managers for involving the public. One merit recognizes the "Murin-an Fostering Fellows," a system where citizen volunteers are trained in the value of the garden as a cultural asset and are encouraged to work at their own pace in the facility, nurturing it together.

The garden’s other merit is the variety of events that it hosts. In addition to tea and Japanese sweets events, unexpected projects such as photo and art exhibitions are also held there.

On April 21, 1903 the two-story brick Western-style house hosted the historic Murin-an Conference. In a second floor reception room under its coffered ceiling, Aritomo Yamagata, Hirobumi Ito, Taro Katsura, and Jutaro Komura met to discuss diplomatic policies on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War. The windows of this room are usually closed to preserve its panel paintings, but every April 21 the room is specially opened to the public to allow in outside light and ventilation.

In fact, Mr. Nishizawa showed us around Murin-an because the Nikken Sekkei Heritage Business Lab is in charge of the seismic survey of its three buildings (the main building, tea ceremony room and the Western-style house). It is expected that some kind of construction work will be carried out; Ms. Yamada said she hopes to be able to observe the work from the garden. I hope this will be realized as a new way to show cultural assets.

Murin-an Location: 31 Kusakawa-cho, Nanzenji, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto City, Japan
Site area: 3,135 m2 (area designated as cultural property)
Client: Aritomo Yamagata
Landscape architect: Jihei Ogawa VII
Garden construction period: 1894-1896

Main Building
Completion: 1896
Architect: Unknown
Builder: Unknown
Structure / number of floors: wooden, one story, partial two-story

Western-style house
Year of completion: 1898
Architect: Takamasa Niinomi
Builder: Mannosuke Shimizu
Structure and number of floors: brick, two stories

Tea House
Completion: relocated around 1895
Structure / number of floors: wooden, one story

Closed: December 29 to December 31
Access: Kyoto City Bus, Kyoto Okazaki Loop, four-minute walk from “Nanzenji/Sosui Kinenkan/Dobutsuen Higashimon-mae”stop, or a 10-minute walk from Jingumichi or “Okazaki Koen/Bijutsukan/Heian Jingu-mae” stop. About a seven-minute walk from Kegami Station on the Kyoto Municipal Subway Tozai Line. About a 20-minute taxi ride from Kyoto Station.

Open hours: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. April to September, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. October to March (last admission 30 minutes before closing time)
Admission: 600 yen (free for children under elementary school age, free for elementary school students living in the city and persons over 70 years old)
Murin-an Cafe: 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Official website: https://murin-an.jp/en/