PORTLAND, Ore., United States—June 4, 2026—Alaska Airlines and Portland Japanese Garden today announced a new, multi-year partnership, bringing together two Pacific Northwest entities committed to building community, finding cultural connection and creating meaningful guest experiences.

Through this partnership, Alaska will help enable the Garden’s mission of Inspiring Harmony and Peace by sharing Japanese culture with the world. As a visible expression of the collaboration, Alaska will feature Portland Japanese Garden on its 2026 Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade float, bringing a representation of the Garden’s beauty and cultural significance to thousands of parade attendees and viewers in downtown Portland. The collaboration will also support a range of initiatives designed to elevate visitor experiences, expand access to cultural programming and deepen community engagement both locally and beyond. 

“Portland Japanese Garden is a treasured cultural institution in our region. We are honored to partner with an organization that embodies connection, care and a profound respect for place—values that resonate deeply with Alaska’s mission,” said Jeanette Waddle, Public Affairs Manager at Alaska Airlines, “This collaboration will help us create meaningful moments for the broader community.” 

“Portland Japanese Garden is thrilled to begin its new partnership with Alaska Airlines. Both our organizations believe that cultural exchange creates meaningful connection and understanding across communities,” said Lisa Christy and Aki Nakanishi, Co-Chief Executive Officers at Portland Japanese Garden, “This partnership will help strengthen our longstanding relationship with Japan, so we can continue to offer an authentic space where people can experience beauty, serenity, and vibrancy of Japanese culture. We’re excited to celebrate our new friendship at the Rose Festival Parade in Portland and share that spirit of connection with the city we proudly call home.”  

Alaska has proudly served Portland since 1979, with more than 2,900 employees from Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air and Hawaiian Airlines based in the city. This partnership reinforces the airline’s commitment to the city and its communities, leveraging a shared vision of fostering understanding, connection and well-being through the creation of thoughtful experiences. 

For more information, please visit https://japanesegarden.org/.

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Media Contact

Media Relations
newsroom@alaskaair.com    

Portland Japanese Garden
Megumi Kato, Senior Director of Brand and Innovation 
(503) 542-0288 (office) 
mkato@japanesegarden.org  

About Alaska, Hawaiian and Horizon  

Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group, and McGee Air Services is a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines. We are a global airline with hubs in Seattle, Honolulu, Portland, Anchorage, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. We deliver remarkable care as we fly our guests to more than 140 destinations throughout North America, Latin America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. Guests can book travel at alaskaair.com and hawaiianairlines.com. Alaska and Hawaiian are members of the oneworld alliance. Members of our Atmos Rewards loyalty program can earn and redeem points with oneworld airlines and our additional global partners that serve over 1,000 worldwide destinations. Learn more about what’s happening at Alaska and Hawaiian at news.alaskaair.com. Alaska Air Group is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as “ALK.”  

About Portland Japanese Garden 

Portland Japanese Garden is a nonprofit organization originally founded in 1963 as a place for cross-cultural understanding following World War II. A hallmark in the City of Portland, the Garden was founded on the ideals of peace and mutual understanding between peoples and cultures. Portland Japanese Garden is considered the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan and the foremost Japanese cultural organization in North America. Portland Japanese Garden has a mission of Inspiring Harmony and Peace. 

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As reported in The New York Times, Portland Japanese Garden is a great outing for families. With a series of rotating cultural demonstrations and performances, art exhibitions, a Gift Shop filled with unique and fun wares, wagashi (Japanese sweets) and teas at the Umami Café, and the everlasting beauty of our landscape, the Garden has something for everyone.

The appeal of Portland Japanese Garden for kids isn’t just something that we have witnessed, it’s something many of our staff know firsthand! We chatted with some of the moms and dads on our team to learn some tips they have for bringing kids to the Garden, and why they enjoy family time here.

Tips For Parents Bringing Children to Portland Japanese Garden

We asked parents on our staff what tips they might be able to share about other moms, dads, and guardians might benefit from knowing ahead of their visit, such as the convenient stroller parking we have on-site.

“We have collaborated with a beloved local illustrator, Mike Bennett, for our Children’s Discovery Map,” shares Megumi Kato, Senior Director of Brand and Innovation. “You can find these at our Fukuta Concierge Desk, and make sure to let them know when you find all the items for a fun sticker prize!”

“Since food is not allowed here, I recommend that you plan your outing around their meal and snack times,” Mayuko Sasanuma, Director of Cultural Programming, shares. “Pro tip: Your kiddos might enjoy a small picnic at the [adjacent] International Rose Test Garden before or after the trip to Portland Japanese Garden.”

“You could also end your visit at the Umami Café,” Japanese Garden Training Center Manager Yuki Wallen adds. “You will have something you look forward to while strolling. You can also tell your hungry kids that something yummy is waiting for them, which seems to help calm them down. It is a great way to finish your experience at the Garden.”

“I’d suggest taking our free shuttle up unless your kids are used to hiking,” Cultural Programs Manager Kelsey Cleveland adds, noting the winding switchback trail through our Entry Garden that takes guests into the Cultural Village. She also offered a way to keep the kids engaged throughout the experience.  “If your child is old enough, let them serve as the photographer of your visit to capture the visit from their perspective.”

Finally, there are several events held at Portland Japanese Garden that are specifically tailored for younger audiences. “Sign up for our weekly newsletter and check out about our festivals,” Sasanuma concludes. “Most of our festivals are kid and family-friendly and for some, we offer child-centered activities, like ikebana and origami workshops.”

A Place to Rejoice (And See Koi!)

Why bring the kids to the Garden? Sadafumi Uchiyama, Curator Emeritus of Portland Japanese Garden, once described our grounds as a “depository of all kinds of emotions.” While many seek its comfort in moments of distress, it is equally a fitting place to rejoice life’s happy moments. So, while some may seek a quiet corner in the Natural Garden for self-reflection, there are plenty of elements that match the vibrancy and joy children bring with them.

“My child loves doing the Children’s Discovery Map!” Kathy Parmenter, Executive Assistant and Director of Board Relations, shares, referring to the same free map previously mentioned, one that guides guests on a scavenger-style search throughout the Garden, available at the Mayho and Calvin Tanabe Welcome Center or Concierge office in the Cultural Village. “It keeps them engaged throughout the Garden. We also like to have a sweet treat in the Umami Café.”

“My 6-year-old son likes the koi and the deer chaser,” Sasanuma adds. “He also likes to come for the traditional Japanese music performances.”

Introducing a Different Culture

As some of the earliest correspondence between its founding Board of Directors and our original designer, Professor Takuma Tono of Tokyo Agricultural University, demonstrates, Portland Japanese Garden was built with the mindset of cultural diplomacy, a term that has many definitions but generally be taken as a means of establishing peace and friendship through the mutual exchange of the arts, values, beliefs, customs, and more. Furthermore, it is done so in a way that it can engage with multiple audiences at once, regardless of age or personal knowledge of Japan.

“It is a great place for a multi-generational outing with kids, parents, and grandparents,” Cleveland, shares. “It’s also a great place to expose kids to another culture without having to travel a long distance to do so. My teenage son has been visiting the Garden since he first learned to walk. In elementary school, he came with a pencil and sketchbook and enjoyed drawing both the koi and the Sand and Stone Garden.”

“My child and I love the free cultural performances and demonstrations,” Parmenter adds. “We make a point to see all the various exhibitions within the Pavilion. It’s the perfect way to introduce various art forms in a low stress way.”

Reconnecting with Heritage

For some, the Garden’s authentic presentation of Japanese culture is especially meaningful because of their personal background. “I am Japanese and my kids grew up in Japan till they were five, 10 and 13,” Wallen shares. “It is important for me that they do not forget where they come from. Portland Japanese Garden being an immersive experience is essential because they feel the sense of Japan while strolling the gardens—they do not have to be ‘told’ or ‘taught.’”

“I want to give my daughter an opportunity to feel, understand and educate herself through the five senses,” Japan Liaison Manager Natsuko Takahashi shares. “She is now a young adult, so her view of the Garden has shifted from loving the koi, the Kodomo no Hi (Children’s Day) activities, and shopping at the Gift Shop to sitting at my desk pretending to work on the Bring Your Child to work day, volunteering for the Garden, and discovering and learning about her Japanese heritage and culture. She became more aware of the greatness of being multi-cultural and cross cultural through looking at herself through the Garden as a Japanese American.”

“As a Japanese American mother in Portland, I feel fortunate, inspired, and reassured knowing that a place like Portland Japanese Garden exists, where I can bring my children to connect to our heritage in a setting they love – nature!” notes Kato.

Time in Nature

With eight different garden styles ensconced in the towering Douglas firs and cedars of Washington Park, Portland Japanese Garden is a terrific outing for parents eager to get their little ones out in nature. Regardless of the season or the weather of the day, the Garden always provides a place to stroll outdoors and away from glowing screens. Furthermore, on its perch overlooking the city, it is a way to get away from the quickened pace of the urban environment.

“It is beautiful,” Wallen says. “The care provided by the gardeners is superb. And the location being a little bit away from the city’s bustle makes it special. Do not rush and take time to immerse yourself and your kiddos in the Garden. Immersion is the key to understanding Japanese gardens.”

Reinforcing Life’s Lessons

No garden is ever just a garden—they’re reminders of what is achievable through care for the land, gifts created for unmet future generations, and avenues through which we confirm our place within the natural world. Portland Japanese Garden, the former site of a brownfield, fostered by successive groups of caring individuals, and intentionally designed to bring nature to a more humanlike scale, exemplifies these traits. As such, some parents enjoy how the Garden reinforces life lessons they wish to impart on their children.

“The Garden teaches my six-year-old son the sense of seasons as we visit often, as well as both the resilience and vulnerability of nature,” Sasanuma shares. “He now knows that if you step on the moss, it can take years for it to grow back.”

“The architecture is beautiful—the buildings and the gardens complement each other very well,” adds Wallen. “The harmony between nature and the human hand is very well done here. That’s how I want to live and how I want my kids to live.”

Portland Japanese Garden looks forward to welcoming you here! We suggest buying a household membership, which includes unlimited free admission for two adults and eight accompanying children, under 18 years of age. Household-level memberships are also customizable and include the option to add up to three additional members or guests.

Storytime in the Family Studio!

Join us in the Family Studio for a joyful community storytime celebrating Japanese culture and the power of nature to spark curiosity and wonder. Perfect for families and young readers, this monthly event features a selection of stories especially chosen for children aged 3 to 8, but all ages are welcome to enjoy the fun! One Saturday each month, come share in the joy of storytelling through a new theme inspired by Portland Japanese Garden’s cultural festivals and community programs.

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Writer and journalist Kay Kingsman visited Portland Japanese Garden’s first new art exhibition of 2026 and noted “Portland Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon has the (well-deserved) reputation of being the most beautiful and authentic Japanese garden in the world outside of Japan. But now, visitors to this beautiful garden will get an extra taste of art with its first new art exhibition of 2026, Enduring Impressions: Contemporary Woodblock Prints.” Kingsman’s full article on Enduring Impressions can be read on Yahoo.

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Portland Japanese Garden has been and always will be a community effort. Beginning as a grassroots project, it was local Portlanders and their friends in Japan that rallied together leaders in government, business, and cultural institutions to transform old zoo grounds into the urban oasis now enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of visitors every year from all 50 United States and more than 90 nations and territories.

The Garden has now provided a place of beauty, time in nature, and cultural immersion for more than 60 years and it’s because of members like you. In an effort to make it even easier for our community to support a landscape and programming with an increasingly vital mission of Inspiring Harmony and Peace, we’re sharing two different ways you can ensure future generations can enjoy Portland Japanese Garden.

Evergreen Monthly Giving

By spreading your annual donation to the Garden over 12 months, you guarantee a steady flow of funding that allows us to: maintain the beauty of the Garden with a full-time professional staff of gardeners working in conjunction with our volunteers, present world-class cultural programming and educational programs throughout the year, and reduce fundraising costs to maximize the impact of your contribution and help the environment with fewer mailings. Also, Evergreen automatic recurring gifts from your checking or credit card account are tax-deductible!

“Portland Japanese Garden is my home away from home,” shares Yoneko Shimizu-Dalton, who among her many connections to the organization supports it as a monthly donor. “Now living in the U.S., I’m grateful to have found watashi no furusato (私の故郷, my hometown) here. Monthly giving is a way for me to build and maintain my connection with the Garden and is the easiest way to donate year after year to the place I hold most dear outside of Japan.”

Monthly Memberships

Monthly memberships are similar to how Evergreen Monthly Giving helps provide the Garden a regular boost of support that goes into providing our guests a world-class experience! One notable difference, though, is that by supporting our organization is this way, you’re entitled to all of the benefits of a membership at either the Matsu, Tsubaki, or Sakura levels, which provide special perks including exclusive access to special Garden events like Twilight Hours

“I can think of no better place than Portland Japanese Garden where all your wishes for peace come true,” share Kristen Siemon and Sam Medford, who like Shimizu-Dalton are actively involved with the organization in many ways. “A monthly membership allows us to share the Garden with others and to attend special events in the glow of evening and know we are a part of something important and beautiful.”

To learn how you can make your membership at the Matsu, Tsubaki, or Sakura levels monthly, please contact our Membership team at membership@japanesegarden.org or calling 503-796-9180.

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On the walls of the Pavilion Gallery, white tailed kites soar above a dazzling pattern of spring ferns in April Vollmer’s print Circling. A Chinese bellflower unfurls its five violet petals in Kenji Takenaka’s Kikyō (桔梗) and a delicate chrysanthemum sprouts as though by magic from the red paper of an instant ramen cup in Yoonmi Nam’s Instant series.

These works by Vollmer, Takenaka, and Nam are just a selection by seven artists featured in Enduring Impressions: Contemporary Woodblock Prints, on display in the Pavilion Gallery this spring. The exhibition is the first collaboration between Portland Japanese Garden and the Honolulu Museum of Art, and celebrates iconic art of mokuhanga (木版画), the centuries-old process of Japanese-style woodblock printmaking.

Mokuhanga has an extensive history in Japan, and the accessible price and transportable nature of prints allowed imagery and artistry from Japan to travel widely around the world and become a globally renowned art form after Japan opened its borders at the turn of the 19th century. Enduring Impressions reveals how a centuries-old tradition is experiencing a contemporary revival as artists around the world use the quiet power and unique characteristics of woodblock printmaking to create captivating works of art.

Part of the beauty of the contemporary landscape of mokuhanga is the community being built around the practice, in addition to the exquisite artworks themselves. Today, new generations of artists have been inspired to learn the art of mokuhanga, contributing to the spread of this art form across cultures and years.

The work of the seven artists in the Pavilion Gallery represent a selection of this community of contemporary artists inspired by the aesthetics and process of mokuhanga. Co-curated with Stephen Salel, the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Curator of Japanese Art, the work of seven artists in the Pavilion Gallery represent a selection of this community that has been inspired by the aesthetics and process of mokuhanga. Six artists – Kenji Takenaka, April Vollmer, Yoonmi Nam, Miho Morinoue, Hiroko Morinoue, and Setsuko Morinoue, were exhibited at HoMA in the fall of 2025. Representing Portland’s own vibrant arts community is Aya Morton, an Oregon-based artist and illustrator.

Behind the contemporary landscape of mokuhanga lies an extensive tradition stretching across centuries. The Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery presents just a chapter of this rich legacy through the exhibition of work by two artists who differ in culture, era, and style, but who are united in process: shin hanga artist Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) and Portland-born abstract artist Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993). On loan from The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints and the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation respectively, these prints were both created using the highly coordinated design process known as the hanmoto (版元) system, in which a publisher “led” an operation involving multiple artists and craftspeople to produce printed artwork, including the artist who created the original design, woodblock carvers, and printers.

Wandering through the gallery of nature-inspired prints, one might feel the presence of artists and audiences across centuries who were equally inspired by the same beauty of the natural world as well as the careful and detailed process of creating mokuhanga prints. Rooted in tradition but growing within community and innovation, the contemporary landscape of mokuhanga artists continues to evolve and inspire.

Enduring Impressions: Contemporary Woodblock Prints is open now through June 15.

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KATU-TV, Portland’s ABC affiliate, recently featured Portland Japanese Garden and its history of promoting cultural exchange between the U.S. and Japan. Speaking with Lisa Christy and Aki Nakanishi, Co-CEOs of the organization, KATU’s Samantha Holm also covered the Garden’s recent honor of being named one of the most beautiful gardens in the world by Homes & Gardens and its new ongoing art exhibition, Enduring Impressions: Contemporary Woodblock Prints. The interview can be watched on KATU’s website or down below.

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In the 1960s, Professor Takuma Tono of the Tokyo Agricultural University decided to create different garden styles within Portland Japanese Garden so it could serve as a living classroom on these landscapes throughout history. This spirit of education, integral to the organization’s establishment, continues to grow today. Among the ways this is seen is through “Meet the Niwashi,” a series of digital meetings that connect Portland Japanese Garden’s gardeners with experts at Ueyakato Landscape, a Kyoto-based company that offers landscape gardening services, including planning, design, construction, maintenance, and management.

“Meet the Niwashi” launched at the Garden in 2022 in partnership with Ueyakato Landscape under the oversight of Hugo Torii, Garden Curator of Portland Japanese Garden and Director of the Japanese Garden Training Center. Prior to moving to Portland, Torii had worked for Ueyakato Landscape, managing projects such as the Japanese garden and greeneries for the nearly 60-acre Keihanna Commemorative Park, the strolling pond garden at the Yosui-en Garden, and annual maintenance of pine trees at Nijo Castle.

The sessions connect Portland and Kyoto, typically at the end of business day here in Oregon and the start for those in Japan. As Ueyakato Landscape notes, these rare opportunities to learn directly from their experts have covered subjects including pine needling, how to use teboki (Japanese hand brooms), moss care, and more. While the expert may change from session to session, these meetings typically include the coordination and assistance from Michael Shapiro, who serves as a researcher and translator for Ueyakato Landscape.

In October, Torii and his team gathered to meet with Shigeyoshi Takemura for the most recent iteration of “Meet the Niwashi.” Takemura has worked with Ueyakato Landscape for nearly a quarter-century, including nearly 20 years as head gardener at Kyoto’s Nanzen-ji Temple, a nationally designated historic site. He connected with Portland alongside Shapiro and discussed cleaning Dainei-ken Garden, a sub-temple of Nanzenji. After watching a video of the cleaning process, gardeners were able to ask hyper-specific questions, such as decisions that go into how much bark one should remove from a tree. In all, it’s a valuable means of helping gardeners in Portland with the practical knowledge of task prioritization when time is limited in the Garden.

“The process of learning never ends when it comes to Japanese gardens because they are constantly changing,” shares Torii. “It can be for many reasons, such as the environment of a place modifying because of climate change. It can be because people’s tastes and perspectives, and thus, their needs from a garden, have evolved and certain functions have changed. Even if there wasn’t this amount of constant shifting and readjusting, there is a complexity that even the most dedicated student can never grasp in its entirety. The skilled gardener is not someone who claims to know everything. The skilled gardener is the one who has the discipline to keep learning, has the awareness that wisdom might come from unexpected sources, and has the ability to execute based on this knowledge.”

In addition to “Meet the Niwashi,” Torii has led and championed the Professional Gardener Work Exchange Program in which Portland Japanese Garden either welcomes practitioners from similar organizations or sends its own staff to those organizations, all with the intention of information sharing. To learn more about the exchange program, read this profile on our guest from Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

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In March, Lisa Christy and Aki Nakanishi, both tapped as Co-CEOs of Portland Japanese Garden in January 2026, sat down for an interview with Portland Business Journal. Their conversation with reporter Elizabeth Hayes touched on their plans for the Garden’s physical landscape, finances, and how it serves as a place of healing and peace for its community. The article can be read on the Journal‘s website.

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By Will Lerner

On January 31, Living Traditions returned for a new installment in what has become an anticipated annual tradition of conversations and talks exploring the most iconic facets of Japanese culture and traditions. Launched in 2020 as a joint project of Japan Institute of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Society, 2026 was the third year of a Portland-based, in-person gathering, once again returning to Cheatham Hall at the World Forestry Center in Washington Park.

This year, the afternoon gathering was titled “Visions of Water: Revitalizing Cities, Landscapes, and Community Life” and was centered around water as a bridge between heritage and innovation. Featuring historic examples such as Kyoto’s sophisticated networks of rivers, canals, and springs alongside contemporary architectural responses shaped by climate, community, and place, this year’s program brought together an insightful panel discussion of global leaders in landscape design, architecture, and urban culture:

• Balázs Bognár, Partner & Executive Vice President, Kengo Kuma & Associates 
• Kathryn Gustafson, Founding Partner, Gustafson Porter + Bowman
• Shunsaku Miyagi, Founding Partner, PLACEMEDIA Landscape Architects Collaborative & Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design

“There is a special kind of magic in bringing together voices so compelling that even a single word like water becomes a world,” shares Aki Nakanishi, who in addition to his roles of Co-Chief Executive Officer and Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Art, Culture, and Education at Portland Japanese Garden, served as emcee and moderator. “Our speakers kept us leaning forward the entire time. I remain in awe of the opportunity to engage in conversation alongside these three remarkable thinkers and makers.

Below are some moments captured from the speakers, but they do not capture the entirety of their talks. The video shared above and also here contains the entire contents of all three speakers plus their panel discussion that concluded the afternoon.

Stepping the Architecture Back

Among the elements that render Japanese landscape architecture distinct from other traditions and cultures is the role of buildings. Whereas other cultures may consider the building first and landscape second, Japanese gardens instead seek to blend a building within. The Tea House in Portland Japanese Garden’s Tea Garden, subdued, rustic, and sheltered by trees and the hillside, is an example of this.

The first speaker of the afternoon, Balázs Bognár, spoke to how the work he has done with his colleagues at Kengo Kuma & Associates aligns with this philosophy, which is among the many reasons why his firm was an extraordinary fit to design the Garden’s Cultural Village. Bognár started his presentation with an image of the moon viewing platform at Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto.

“It’s our favorite photograph of architecture,” Bognár shared. “It’s only floor and roof. The rest is nature and the rest is how we relate to that scene beyond us. … It’s how we recognize contexts, our surroundings, and our understanding of our place in the cosmos. This framing helps us to tell shared stories and to remember and to think through together. By stepping the architecture back, it is our hope that we see more and gain deeper insights, not just about ourselves, but about each other.”

“Portland Garden Village underlines the notion that the garden has a house in it and not the other way around as in the western paradigm,” he shared. “From moment to moment, water creates an undercurrent of continuity, and indeed you’re greeted by water at the very outset. It’s immediately a sensory presence from the start of this journey from bottom to top with rippling light and burbling acoustics. And this changes with the weather, the time of day, seasons, and from year to year.”

The idea of not attempting to use architecture to dominate the nature around it, but rather complement it has been present in several of Kengo Kuma & Associates’ works around the world, waterways very much being a part of this. An example of this was seen in the Kitakami Canal Museum in Miyagi Prefecture northeast of Tokyo. “Our effort is to minimize that architecture so that really what’s on display is the water of the canal,” he said. “The whole thing is submerged. It’s a game of hide and go seek. The building is almost not there.”

The Representation of Water

Another layer of complexity when it comes to the relationship between Japanese landscape architecture and water is how water is depicted within the built environment. While many of Japan’s historic gardens were designed to take advantage of the natural hydrological features of Kyoto, today’s spaces across the world may not be able to rely on what is provided by the earth. Instead they must create waterways where none existed. This is seen in Portland Japanese Garden, particularly in the Strolling Pond Garden, where the ponds, streams, and waterfalls were all formed by human hands.

The idea of taking inspiration from nature and deploying it in the garden was a key element of the talk provided by the afternoon’s second speaker, Shunsaku Miyagi, Founding Partner of PLACEMEDIA Landscape Architects Collaborative and Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Miyagi noted how the idea of immersing the built environment inside the natural one can be traced back to the oldest known extant manual on garden building, the Sakuteiki (11^th century).

“’Contemplate the famous place of various regions,’” Miyagi recited. “’Incorporate the charming elements of each place, make them your own, and then create a gentle pattern by softening its form. Depending on the topography and the shape of the pond, add your own touch to each of the areas that arise, and while considering the natural landscape generated a form while imagining what it was like there.’”

“In this way, one of the most important design methods in traditional gardening in Japan was to make a visual quotation of nature and its landscape and in [all] cases the presence of water remains a central feature,” he then followed in his own words.

“The reason why this design method of visually referencing specific elements in natural landscapes without scale references has become so widely applied is because of a theory concept very quite unique to Japan,” he continued. “That is mitate. It is quite difficult to find an English word to accurately convey the concept or meaning of mitate, but metaphoric representation would be one of the possible translations. It refers to the poetic act or mindset to seeing one thing as another by transforming natural figures and materials into symbolic representation.” While the professor would go on to demonstrate examples of this with gardens in Japan, it can also be seen quite clearly in Portland Japanese Garden. If one peers into the raked gravel of the Flat Garden, they’ll see ripples appearing alongside the mossy islands in its middle. Here we see water symbolized. However, sometimes the allusion to natural waterways is more subtle, such as how the edges of the ponds in the Strolling Pond Garden are rough hewn in the way a coastline might appear.

Related: Learn More About Mitate and Other Design Principles That Go Into Making Japanese Gardens

A significant portion of Miyagi’s presentation also included his theory on the levels of scale seen in a landscape, noting that the composition of mountains, valley, and water running throughout that make up the entirety of the Kyoto Basin can be perceived on six levels of scale. In addition to the video, more on that can be read in this summary of Japan Institute’s 2025 TEIEN FORUM in Tokyo.

Artistic Composition of Water

As much as Portland Japanese Garden may attempt to evoke thoughts of nature by having architecture blend within it or by using visual quotations of the land outside its boundaries, it is still nonetheless an act of humankind. The landscape of the Garden was not much more than rocks and dirt before Professor Takuma Tono oversaw its transformation like a sculptor may do so with a block of clay.

The third and final speaker of the afternoon was Kathryn Gustafson, a founding Partner at Gustafson Porter + Bowman, someone who has, like Tono, has worked landscapes into acres of artistic expression. Her career, approaching 50 years, has seen her work with water in a way that avoids ostentatious display that imposes itself on public spaces but rather reflects an intuitive approach that comes across as something nearly primordial, as though they are the lasting touches of a prior civilization more advanced than ours.

“My first project was stormwater management, and it was to drain the fields so that farmers in France could start getting their fields prepared and keep them from flooding. And it was my absolute first project. I went from fashion to landscape architecture because I wanted it to be an art form. Sculpture and sculpting the earth, became part of it. And through that I learned to understand plants, understand water, understand sustainability, understand engineering, and it has carried me through a marvelous journey to this day.”

Gustafson also discussed how her work with water can serve as a metaphoric reinterpretation of the people who shaped the land centuries prior, such as the work she did on Parque Central in Valencia, Spain. This green space built over old, buried train tracks was inspired by the Horta of Valencia, an important agricultural space. “The Moors were there in the 12th century and with irrigation, they brought water from the mountains into all the fields,” she noted. “And it’s the fruit basket of the food basket of all of Europe.”

“I wanted to design a park that was about water and about the place. The first thing I discovered is that my site was a bowl. And then I went to the [Valencia History Museum] and the museum showed bowls people ate out of. It was a place of bowls and food and water…so we did a park of bowls…”

Gustafson ended her talk by demonstrating how water can soften something that is quite literally a barrier—ingeniously maintaining the safety that it might provide while rendering it into something more artistic and humanistic.

“These are bollards, these are foundations built down,” she said, referring to two massive safety structures on the site of one of her more recent projects at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. “I can’t even tell you how deep they will stop a truck [that may intend to cause damage by driving into the building]. … You have to make it look like they really aren’t there and it isn’t like you’re next to a barrier. Those two water features are 20 meters long, five meters wide and they actually reflect the building.”

When someone pointed out to her that in times of drought, the water might not be present to create the desired reflection, so she included in the barrier a surface of sculpted and polished black granite. “When you don’t have water, it reflects the sky and it becomes a sculpture.”

Gustafson’s work has taken her throughout the world (“I travel a bit and I like it,” she noted) and that work has also taken her to Japan. A project she highlighted there was the 11-acre Grand Green in Osaka, Japan. A massive and still ongoing undertaking, which saw the site of train station be combined with the similarly sized 11-acre Umekita Park, Gustafson and her colleagues took what had been a drab sight of concrete and metal into a vibrant natural space, where water once again was used in an artistic fashion. Referring to a pool of water near a large, 20-foot-tall oval curb they built, she noted “When the sun sets in the west, it is down the center of that water feature that you see from the top.”

Water’s Vast Terrain

“I’d like to once again give my deepest thanks to our speakers for the vision, creativity, and insight they shared so generously, shaped by lived experience at the intersection of tradition and modernity,” Nakanishi concludes. “I also have the deepest gratitude as well to our full-house audience along with our partners at the Prime Minister’s Office of Japan and Japan Society New York. We will carry this moment with us for years, as we continue exploring water’s vast terrain, from poetics and sustainability to disaster recovery, philosophy, art, belonging, history, and AI.”

Written by Will Lerner, Marketing and Communications Manager for Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute.

More About Living Traditions

Many of today’s most popular and newest trends are rooted in ancient Japanese traditions going back centuries, if not millennia. Since its inception in 2020, the Living Traditions series has been unraveling the historical journeys of some of the most iconic facets of Japanese culture through conversations between thought-provoking experts and cultural stewards. Previously only available virtually, Living Traditions held its first in-person gathering in 2024. This third in-person installment continues the endeavor’s efforts to explore the ever-increasing significance of “Living in Harmony with Nature” at the intersection of architecture, landscape architecture, and art.   

Living Traditions is presented by Japan Institute of Portland Japanese Garden in partnership with Japan Society (NY). The series is supported by the Government of Japan.   

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