Rakuzan’en Garden

Rakuzan'en Garden in Yoita occupies the former villa grounds of the Osakaya Miwa family, who were among Japan's wealthiest merchants in the mid-eighteenth century, running ships that carried rice and salt to Kyoto and Osaka. The main house, Rakuzantei, was built in 1892 and features pillars deliberately omitted from the veranda to preserve the view down to the town below. Higher on the slope is a Kannondo Hall housing a fourteenth-century eleven-headed Kannon sculpture. Two memorial stones in the garden carry words written by the Zen monk and poet Ryokan, who was a close friend of the family and sometimes stayed at the villa.