Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden, Historical garden with Japanese-European mansion in Ikenohata, Japan
Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden is a protected park featuring a two-story wooden mansion in the Western style, a billiard house, and a Japanese reception hall in Ikenohata, Japan. The grounds combine formal European landscaping with traditional Japanese elements such as ponds, bridges, and carefully placed trees.
The estate was a daimyo residence of the Sakakibara family in the Edo period, then passed to Makino Tsugunari and Kirino Toshiaki before Iwasaki Yataro bought it in 1878. His son Hisaya had Josiah Conder design the Western mansion and the billiard room, and the shoin-style Japanese hall by carpenter Ōkawa Kijūrō, all completed in 1896. After 1945 GHQ used it as the Cannon Agency headquarters; the Supreme Court later held it, and Tokyo opened it as a park in 2001.
The name refers to the Iwasaki family who once owned the estate and received guests in both buildings. Today visitors stroll between the lawns in front of the mansion and the ponds with stone lanterns in the Japanese section of the park.
The grounds are open daily and located within walking distance of nearby subway stations. Visitors wanting to compare both architectural styles should allow time for a tour through the interior rooms and garden paths.
The billiard house, designed by Josiah Conder like the main mansion, imitates a Swiss mountain chalet with its log-storehouse exterior. A tunnel beneath the garden links its basement to the Western building. Only the exterior is open to visitors; inside, Meiji-era gold-leather paper still covers the walls.
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