Four Seasons in an 800-Year-Old Pond Garden

The beautiful, 10,000 square metre (100,000 square foot) garden at Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto is known as Shakusuien.

It is believed that, 800 years ago, Shakusuien was a garden of the mountain villa and residence of Shigemori Taira (Lord Komatsu), eldest son of the 12th-century samurai Kiyomori Taira. The garden is described in an epic poem of the period The Tale of Heike (The Taira Clan) as a "picnic site of Komatsu, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan."

A good warrior and a fine scholar, the always-calm Shigemori was considered more eminent than his father Kiyomori. He especially liked this place at the foot of the Kiyomizu Temple.

Although renovated around the turn of the 18th century, in the Genroku Era of the Edo Period, Shakusuien remains one of the few gardens created at the end of the Heian Period, the peak of Imperial Japan. Today, Shakusuien is a precious cultural asset.

Shakusuien is a circuit-style ikeniwa or pond garden. On the east side of the 3,000 square metre (32,000 square foot) pond is an oshima (large island) and, on the west, a koshima or kameshima (small island).

South of the oshima are five "night-mooring stones" or yodomari-ishi evoking treasure ships at-anchor in the harbour, laden with elixirs of life. People have likened the oshima to Mount Horai, Island of the Immortals, where they lived in harmony with nature. According to Chinese mythology, which greatly influenced the design of classical Japanese gardens, one prays on a yodomari stone for longevity.

We pray from the bottom of our hearts that Shakusuien fills our guests with lasting peace and contentment.