Kitamura Museum of Art Shikunshien

A Tea Garden Named for Kitamura

Kitamura Museum of Art Shikunshien (北村美術館四君子苑, Shikunshi-en) is the former home and tea garden of the businessman and tea collector Kitamura Kinjirō in Kajii-cho, Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto City; its sukiya-style buildings were completed in 1944, four of them were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2001, and the main house followed in 2020. It sits on the west bank of the Kamo River where the Kamo and Takano rivers meet and the channel is at its widest, right beside the Kitamura Museum of Art, which the same foundation runs.

The name is a pun. In Chinese art the chrysanthemum, bamboo, plum and orchid are the "four gentlemen" (shikunshi) of the plant world. Read in Japanese, the first sounds of the four plants give ki, ta, mu and ra. According to the museum, Kitamura chose the name so that his house might share a little of the four plants' dignity. It is the kind of joke a tea man enjoys: learned, private, and folded into a family name.

Kitamura Kinjiro (1904 to 1991) was the second son of the Kitamura Matazaemon family, forest owners in Kamiichi in the Yoshino district of Nara. Alongside the family timber business he and his wife collected tea utensils and art. The Kitamura Bunka Foundation was set up in 1975 to keep the collection together, and the museum opened in 1977. Shikunshien is where that collector lived and received his guests.

Two Builders, Two Eras

The buildings come from two periods. The front gate, the entrance and yoritsuki, the corridor and outer waiting bench, and the detached tea room are late works by Kitamura Sutejirō, one of the most admired sukiya master carpenters in Kyoto. Work began in 1940 and finished in 1944, in the middle of the war. These four are timber buildings that put logs, bamboo and small inventions of detail in front of the visitor.

The main house is postwar. The museum records that in 1963 the architect Yoshida Isoya, the leading figure of modern sukiya design, rebuilt it. Literature cited in the National Diet Library's collaborative reference database adds the background: the earlier house was requisitioned by the Allied occupation forces, and after it was returned Kitamura had it taken down and asked Yoshida, a friend from the world of nagauta music, to design a new one. The result is a site where wartime hand-built sukiya and a reinforced concrete modern sukiya house stand side by side.

The garden is attributed to the Kyoto gardener Sano Esshu. The museum describes Shikunshien above all as a garden of stone, with about 60 pieces of carved stonework placed among the buildings. Three are Important Cultural Properties: a stone lantern inscribed with the date Katei 3 (1237), an octagonal lantern regarded as the original of the Hōon-ji type, and a hōkyōin-tō pagoda known as the Crane Tower. The museum presents the 1237 lantern as the oldest dated stone lantern in Japan.

Layout: From the Gate to the Tea Room

The buildings follow the path a tea guest would take. Through the front gate lies a forecourt garden, and beyond it the entrance and yoritsuki, the room where arriving guests prepare themselves. From the yoritsuki a corridor paved with tiles set on the diagonal runs east, turning as it goes, to the outer waiting bench that belongs to the detached tea room. The tea room itself stands alone at the far end of the garden.

The main house was the family's living space. Its Japanese rooms face the garden, a Western-style living room lies to the north, and a tea room sits on the 2nd floor. The museum lists among the garden's tea rooms a large room called Kandai, which looks across the Kamo River straight at the Daimonji hillside, and the small principal tea room called Chinsanren.

The lanterns, pagoda and other stonework are scattered through the garden between the buildings. The place was composed so that architecture and stone are read together; follow only the buildings and you will miss half of it.

What Is Listed

All 5 buildings are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, registered under the criterion for buildings that serve as a model of design. The detached tea room, the entrance and yoritsuki, the front gate, and the corridor and outer waiting bench were registered on 20 November 2001 as numbers 26-0094 to 26-0097. The main house, rebuilt in 1963, was added on 3 April 2020 as number 26-0595.

Among the stonework, the Crane Tower pagoda was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1961, and the 2 stone lanterns also hold that status.

Visiting and Access

Shikunshien is normally closed. The garden and the interiors open for only a few days each spring and autumn. In autumn 2026 the opening runs from 20 to 25 October, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is 2,000 yen, which also covers the exhibition running at the Kitamura Museum of Art.

From the autumn 2026 opening, visits are by timed session: 3 sessions a day, 90 minutes each, with a limit of 45 people per session. Numbered tickets are handed out from 1 hour before each session, 1 per person, and no one enters without one. The museum warns that the first morning and the last afternoon are the busiest. While you wait you can see the museum's galleries.

Photography and video are not allowed in the garden, and phones and other devices must stay off. You remove your shoes to enter the buildings, so bring socks. Children of elementary school age and younger are not admitted, and wheelchairs and walking sticks cannot be used inside the garden. Groups of 10 or more may be turned away, and any group should contact the museum in advance. The museum puts the average visit to the garden at about 60 minutes.

Outside the opening days you can still see part of the garden if the museum is open. From the entrance hall on the museum's 2nd floor you look down through glass onto the Shikunshien entrance and forecourt. The autumn 2026 exhibition, Banshū Yūhō, runs from 5 September to 6 December, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (last entry 4 p.m.), closed Mondays and the day after national holidays; general admission is 600 yen.

From JR Kyoto Station, Kyoto City Bus routes 4, 7 and 205 run to the Kawaramachi Imadegawa stop, 2 minutes' walk away. From Demachiyanagi, the Keihan line terminus, cross the Kamo River and walk about 5 minutes. From Imadegawa Station on the Karasuma subway line it is about 18 minutes on foot. A taxi from Kyoto Station to the Kawaramachi Imadegawa crossing takes about 15 minutes depending on traffic. The museum's address is written as Kawaramachi Imadegawa Minami Hitosujime Higashi-iru: one block south of the crossing, then east.