Keitaku-en

A purely Japanese pond and stroll garden inside Tennoji Park. It was given to the City of Osaka in Taisho 15 (1926), together with the family's main residence, by the fifteenth Sumitomo Kichizaemon, art name Shunsui, of an Osaka merchant house that went back to the Edo period. A large pond with an island at its centre has artificial hills raised on three sides, which give the ground a varied shape, and paths, stepping stones and bridges run around it, with a tea house and an arbour set among them. The garden was designed and built by Ogawa Jihei, known as Ueji, a gardener who from the middle of Meiji to the early Showa years made large gardens such as the Saionji Kinmochi residence in Tokyo, the Heian Jingu shrine garden and Maruyama Park, and is credited with establishing the style of modern landscape gardening. Shunsui first named it 恵沢園, for the blessings of the age and the bounty left by ancestors, and at completion the name was changed to 慶沢園, Keitaku-en. The main building of the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, seen from the far end of the garden looking toward the entrance, was built on the site of the Sumitomo main residence donated at the same time.

Translated and shortened from the Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City tourist listings (観光施設一覧, CC BY 4.0).