Okayama Family Garden (Yokoen)

Yokoen: A Hidden Meiji Garden in the Mountains of Northern Ibaraki

Tucked away in the former post town of Takabu in Hitachiomiya City, Ibaraki Prefecture, the Okayama Family Garden, known as Yokoen (養浩園), is a lyrical pond-and-stroll garden created in the mid-Meiji era by a wealthy sake brewer who wanted to bring the elegance of the great daimyo gardens of Japan to his own mountain village. Designated a Nationally Registered Monument by the Agency for Cultural Affairs on November 10, 2022, this little-known treasure is paired with a striking three-story wooden tower, the Kiu-tei Pavilion, which together evoke the refined aesthetic and entrepreneurial spirit of late nineteenth-century rural Japan.

For travelers seeking to step beyond the usual tourist trail and discover an authentic, lovingly preserved cultural landscape that few foreign visitors have ever seen, Yokoen offers a quiet, deeply moving glimpse into a Japan shaped by paper merchants, sake brewers, and Chinese poetry.

The Story Behind the Garden

The garden was built by Okayama Sentaro (1833–1889), the founder of the Okayama Brewery. The Okayama family had risen to prominence in Takabu during the Edo period as licensed paper merchants serving the Mito domain, dealing in the prized washi paper, paper mulberry (kozo), and tobacco that flowed through this strategic crossroads town. In 1873, the family pivoted from paper trading to sake brewing, producing labels including the celebrated "Hana no Tomo" (Friend of the Blossoms), which they continued to brew until the early Heisei era.

Having become one of the leading families of the region, Sentaro set out to create a garden and pavilion worthy of the great cultural patrons of the Mito tradition. He modeled both his pavilion and his garden on the famed Kobuntei Pavilion at Kairakuen, the Mito-clan retreat that ranks alongside Korakuen and Kenrokuen as one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan. Construction is believed to have taken place between 1883 and 1897, and the result is an exquisite distillation of Mito-style refinement adapted to a mountain valley setting.

Why This Garden Was Designated a Cultural Property

Yokoen was registered as a National Monument in 2022 because of its rare and well-preserved expression of late-Meiji garden culture in a regional commercial setting. Most surviving Meiji-era stroll gardens belong to former feudal lords, industrialists in major cities, or imperial estates. Yokoen is unusual in that it was built by a country sake brewer who consciously borrowed the visual language of Mito's elite garden culture and translated it into a working merchant's compound in the mountains.

Roughly 3,000 square meters in size, the garden skillfully integrates an inner pond with an island, water channels fed by nearby streams, carefully placed evergreens such as koyamaki (Japanese umbrella pine) and hinoki cypress, and the surrounding "borrowed scenery" of the Ogawa River and the rugged cliffs that rise just beyond. Together with the pavilion above, it forms an intact architectural and landscape ensemble that documents how Meiji-era provincial elites cultivated taste, hosted gatherings, and projected status through garden-making.

Highlights and What to Look For

The first thing that strikes visitors is the Kiu-tei Pavilion (喜雨亭) standing at the garden's gate. Its name comes from the Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu's verse "Spring Night, Joy of Rain" (春夜喜雨), a classical reference signaling the cultivated tastes of its builder. The three-story wooden structure rises with a steep, hipped roof and was unusual for its time and place because the upper floor served, in part, as a kind of advertising tower: stained-glass panels in the third floor windows once spelled out the family's "Hana no Tomo" sake brand, illuminated at night to be visible from the road below.

The second floor remains close to its original Meiji condition. Its eight-tatami parlor, surrounded on the south and east by deep verandas, is decorated with sliding-door paintings by Noguchi Katsuichi, a noted Meiji-era political figure and man of letters. From the verandas, the garden unfolds dramatically to the south, with the pond, central island, and the cliffs beyond all framed as a single composed view, exactly as the builder intended.

Down in the garden itself, ancient plum trees, maples, hydrangeas, azaleas, and rare shiroyashio rhododendrons mark the seasons. In late spring, the white shiroyashio blossoms light up the slopes; in autumn, the maples ignite the pond's reflection; in winter, the surface freezes, just as it once did when the brewer's children were said to have skated across it on geta clogs.

The Surrounding Townscape

Yokoen sits at the heart of Takabu-juku, a remarkably intact Edo-Meiji townscape that once thrived as a hub of paper, lumber, and tobacco trading on the road linking Hitachiota to Karasuyama in present-day Tochigi. A nineteenth-century cadastral map shows that the layout of the town has changed almost nothing in 150 years. Walking the main street, visitors will see the Mamiyake Residence, a striking Western-style house also designated as a Nationally Registered Cultural Property, along with the former Kunimatsu sake brewery, the Omori family compound with its samurai-era sword scars, and the pastel-green former post office. The whole village rewards slow, attentive exploration.

Visiting Yokoen

Yokoen and the Kiu-tei Pavilion are privately owned and ordinarily closed to the public. However, a dedicated local nonprofit, the Miwa-no-Mori Association, together with the citizens' group "Council on the Harmony of Forest and Region," opens the property on selected days each year, typically with guided tours and an explanatory booklet. Past special openings have been held in spring, with admission of approximately 500 yen per person (free for junior high school students and younger). Tours generally last about one hour and are conducted in Japanese.

Because the schedule changes from year to year, travelers planning a visit are encouraged to contact the Miwa-no-Mori Association in advance to confirm upcoming open days. The site is best reached by car; parking is provided in a lot directly across the street from the entrance.

Other Things to See in the Area

Hitachiomiya City rewards the curious traveler with a string of quietly distinctive attractions. The Kami-no-Sato Center introduces the centuries-old craft of Nishinouchi washi paper, the very tradition that built the wealth of families like the Okayama. The Michi-no-Eki Hitachiomiya Kawa-Plaza roadside station, set along the clear Kuji River, offers fresh local produce, grilled sweetfish (ayu), and a wonderful place to pause for lunch. For a soak after a day of garden-gazing, the Santa-no-Yu hot spring on the slopes of Mount Sannozan is a beloved local choice. Slightly further afield, Mito's Kairakuen Garden, the very model that inspired the Kiu-tei Pavilion, makes a natural complement to a visit to Yokoen.