Portland Japanese Garden’s repute as the most revered Japanese garden outside of Japan ensures it’s both a destination and special experience, whether residing in or visiting Portland. Winding through 12.5 acres of the city’s Washington Park, it features five historic garden styles lyrically named: Strolling Pond, Natural, Sand and Stone, Tea, and Flat. Such a profusion presents a unique range of craftsmanship. Not surprisingly, together these gardens form a nexus of exploration in themselves.
Yet in 1963, Portland Japanese Garden (PJG) wasn’t established primarily as a garden. Its mission was bolder and grander: to advance peace and understanding post WWII. The garden’s concept encompassed inclusiveness as well. Serving as a site for cultural exchange, the garden transcended the common binary between Japan and the US to promote engagement between all peoples and cultures. After WWII’s rupture, PJG’s plan was both a remarkable project and hopeful vision.
The Japan Institute is a 2020 extension of the garden’s multifaceted role. It also integrates and maximizes the garden as a global site through three branches, Center for Japanese Arts & Culture, International Exchange Forum and the Japanese Garden Training Center.
Extending the impact of these spaces beyond Portland, Oregon’s sister-state relationship with Toyama Prefecture in north central Japan along the Sea of Japan coast shores up the garden’s mission. The two regions share the dynamism of lush nature and a consciousness of environmental stewardship. This partnership, moreover, promotes other development besides the garden’s abundance, including state-centered diplomacy, cross-cultural tourism and the Oregon economy.
The recently appointed Co-CEOs of PJG both held longtime roles in the garden prior to accepting their partnership. Lisa Christy worked in several positions, confessing she’s now in her dream job. She brings to the garden’s leadership her orientation and experience from her Sony and Travel Oregon work with Weiden-Kennedy. Her collaborating CEO, Aki Nakanishi, is simultaneously the garden’s Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education and guides the organization’s cultural vision, global partnerships and multidisciplinary programming. He was also a force between the garden and the institute, formerly serving as Director of Japan Institute.
The garden was, and remains, for Christy and Nakanishi, the heart, mind and center of exchange and understanding. Like other traditional Japanese gardens whose focus isn’t only plantings, PJG’s courtyard, tea house and pavilion gallery offer a multiplicity of learning and contemplative experiences: through architecture; seasonal appreciation; practice and presentation of Japanese arts; views from intentionally designed vantage points; and exhibitions of historic and contemporary artworks that feature traditional techniques and innovative elements. Even before passing through the garden gate, PJG’s Cultural Village provides a Japanese arts learning center within, housing the Vollum Library, and is flanked by a garden house, bonsai viewing terrace and a café cleverly named Umami.
These spaces become stage, studio, gallery and workshop for artists, artisans, musicians, dancers and other practitioners that enlarge the garden’s significance. Locals serve as interpreters and educators. A sampling of arts and culture includes specialists working in fibers, ceramics, indigo and natural dyes, decorative cording and origami. Others contribute to visitors’ knowledge and experiences of PJG. Teresa Jordan, Portland artist, author and interfaith chaplain, for instance, will speak on the remarkable healing power of gardens and how mindfulness practice can enhance one’s own experience. During the garden’s September Mindfulness Week, PJG volunteers Cecily Hunt and Steve Bayer later will lead another lecture, “Let Your Senses Guide You: The Science of Mindfulness in the Garden.”
Exhibitions also extend to other region’s treasures, such as a current show displaying the elegant washi sculptured lighting of Seattle-Kyoto artist Yuri Kinoshita, whose pieces are lit biannually in the Kyoto Sale warehouses of Georgetown. Mark your calendar for October 3rd when Reiko Sudō, NUNO’s design director, and Naomi Pollock, writer and editor of the book NUNO: Visionary Japanese Textiles (2021), make an extraordinary international visit to PJG; a corresponding exhibition runs until February 14, 2027.
Rarest of all garden opportunities are demonstrations by visiting Japanese artisans whose myriad techniques lie behind the artistry of the garden. They might introduce how to string yukizuri, the natural rope support systems that protect trees from the weight of snow, or the horticultural tradition of fitting tree trunks with woven straw to protect them from hibernating insects. Workshops on pruning pines and different momiji varieties and making bamboo fencing are more frequent workshops.
Of course, PJG sustains interest in iconic Japanese culture and the arts. Bonsai, ikebana, tea ceremony lessons as well as koto, shakuhachi and other instrumental concerts are ongoing. Nakanishi noted that they are also introducing new nature, culture, pottery and printmaking programs to expand the garden experience, while Christy added they are launching community partnerships across Portland.
In addition to this rich variety of programs and events, Christy and Nakanishi have undaunted visions for JPG’s future. Their guiding motto is to go out on a limb, try new things, assess what works and improve on them. One aim is to expand the concept of a Japanese garden by transcending the notion it serves as a cultural trip where visitors experience “Japan.”
Increasing engagement draws, in part, from the multitude of research indicating that calm and connection are fundamental to human well-being. The CEOs want to get out the message that stepping into PJG can foster internal peace for people struggling with anxiety and social isolation and can ease yearning for connection.
Other work is trailblazing. Christy is prioritizing enhancement of the visitor experience, not only for those in the know but for people in all walks of life too. Her goal encompasses accessibility of thought: How can PJG create civic discourse and variability in cultural exchange? What does the garden impart and share? What programming can attract different communities? While dementia and neurodivergent friendly gardens are one popular enhancement today, PJG has partnered with the Oregon Commission for the Blind to explore possibilities with that community.
Christy and Nakanishi also have a vision for a luminous garden by installing landscape lighting. This addition will be transformative because it activates an evening experience, extending time in, access to and contemplative moments within the garden. This mode also offers new aesthetics: lighting design will provide another way to appreciate the art of nature in trees, for instance, that when lit up at precise angles reveal new beauty. Christy clarifies that the garden lighting is a longer-term project. Even before the designing and installation begin, conceiving of the narrative that the garden wants to reveal in its illumined context is key.
Japanese gardens are not immune to climate change. Christy and Nakanishi lean into the resilience of Japanese gardens: cultivating a single Japanese garden in a single climate integrates series of continuous feats. If freezing temperatures and snowfall were to increase in the Portland area, for example, PJG can adapt by consulting with Japanese gardens across the world that have dealt with similar conditions for decades. This mindset resembles the response to a Douglas fir that fell in PJG: the felling was a shock, but the gardeners adapted to the loss of the single tree’s impact on the garden. “We can learn from the garden in that sense,” Christy remarks.
The brilliance of PJG lies in its integrated learning and experience that keeps the garden fresh, relevant and opens doors to new ideas and thinking. Today, the garden still functions as a beacon of hope for peace and understanding with the 21st century’s specific sociocultural grievances. The garden’s burgeoning opportunities yet stand as a model of the richness that is a multicultural society. Lisa Christy sums up PJG’s value, stating, “The garden is built to welcome all, to help understand all — thereby enabling us to understand the ‘Other.’ Through its design, the garden lowers defenses, opens hearts and minds, and just what the “Other” is, be it a person, concept or different point of view.” For all these reasons, we are fortunate to have the Portland Japanese Garden just a jaunt from the Seattle area.
