Abstract
In the middle of the Meiji Era, Aritomo Yamagata built the Murin-an garden and Hisaya Iwasaki constructed a western-style house with a garden in Kayacho. Some garden history researchers in Japan are of the opinion that those gardens were influenced by English landscape gardens. In reviewing the gardens of Rousham, Stourhead and Blenheim Palace, which are typical English landscape gardens set in three different periods in the development of landscape gardens, however, there seems to be no substantial similarities between the Meiji gardens and the English landscape gardens to support that view. Firstly, the designs of the gardens adjacent to the main buildings are different. Secondly, the designs and the usage of garden ornaments in the Meiji gardens are not comparable to those in the English landscape gardens. Thirdly, the footpath designs in the Meiji gardens were most likely part of the development of the Japanese traditional garden design, rather than copies of English landscape gardens. Lastly, it should be mentioned that influential Japanese politicians and businessmen such as Yamagata and Iwasaki travelled to England only after 1869. It was then the Victorian period, during which the garden design was more decorative than the landscape gardens which were most popular between 1730 and 1780. It would not be natural to think that Yamagata and Iwasaki would have focused on the landscape gardens and brought them to Japan, even though these gardens were not the most popular style at the time of their visit.
