Licensing

1930's

1933
Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago displays Japanese Garden and Pavilion, designed by Issei Taro Otsuka, a garden builder based in the Midwest.

1934
One-third of Los Angeles’s Japanese American labor force work as gardeners.

1935
American writer Loraine Kuck’s book One Hundred Kyoto Gardens is published and coins the term “Zen garden” to describe rock gardens.

1937
Issei Shogi Nagumo establishes the League of Southern California Japanese Gardeners.

1938
The book Gardens in the Modern Landscape by Christopher Tunnard highlights Japanese gardens as a model for contemporary garden design.

1939
World’s fairs at Treasure Island, California, and New York feature Japanese garden displays. Nisei Kaneji Domoto helps install the Japanese gardens at both fairs. After working in his family’s Northern California nursery and studying at Berkeley, he begins a long career that includes working with Frank Lloyd Wright and receiving the 1983 Frederick Law Olmsted Award for his redesign of the Japanese garden at Chicago’s Jackson Park.