Isui-en 3.46

is a Japanese garden located in Nara, the old capital of Japan near Kyōto. It has been preserved since its creation in the Meiji era, and is the only walking garden (kaiyushiki teien) in Nara. It is divided into two sections, which were originally two separate gardens, and each features a pagoda.HistoryThe site of the western garden originally formed part of Manishu-in, a minor temple which was part of the larger temple of Kofuku-ji. The ground was bought in the 1670, during the Enpō era by Kiyosumi Michikiyo, a wealthy tanner. He restructured the gardens between 1673 and 1681 and built two houses: the Sanshu-tei and Tei-shu-Ken, as the family home. These were built with thatched roofs. The name Sanshu-tei (“house of the three wonders”) was given by Mokuan, the large priest of the Manpuku-ji temple of the school Zen Oubaku with Uji.The larger eastern garden dates from 1899 and was designed by Seki Tojiro, a Nara businessman. Tojiro hired for the redesign Horitoku, a garden architect from the school of Urasenke.In 1939, the two gardens were bought and combined by Jyunsaku Nakamura, a merchant of Nara, to provide a site for the attached Neiraku Museum (寧楽美術館), which hosts a collection of traditional Japanese ceramics.LayoutThe gardens cover roughly 145000sqft.In the central pond of the gardens, there are two islands with sculptures of a crane and tortoise. In Japanese culture these animals represent longevity.