Abstract
HARA Tomitaro was a great businessman in Yokohama from the middle Meiji period to the early Showa period. He made Sankei-en garden at San-no-tani, Hommoku in the suburbs of Yokhama. He had a thought that natural beautiful scenery was public properties even if the land was owned privately. And he opened the outer garden of Sankeien to the public on the basis of his thought. His idea about gardens was harmony with nature. In Sankei-en he made good use of the land features and views and moved some old buildings from various parts of the country. The design which got rid of symbolism or miniaturization was more similar to that of landscape gardens in Europe than that of traditional Japanese gardens. And yet it was not a copy of the European ones but a fine work as a Japanese landscape garden.
