This is Shogo Myaida, ca. 1930. This picture was a gift to the Japanese American National Museum, from Francis and Gloria Massimo (97.77.274E)

With extensive horticultural training in Japan, Europe, and the United States, Shogo J. Myaida (1897-1989), an Issei garden designer, successfully incorporated both European and Japanese gardening principles into American landscapes. In the 1920s, after participating in an Ohio State University landscape architecture summer institute in Europe, he settled in the United States. Based in New York, he designed numerous public and residential landscapes on the East Coast. His early projects included the landscaping of a girls summer camp and the 1939 New York World’s Fair Japanese Pavilion gardens.

When the anti-Japanese sentiment of World War II abruptly ended the popularity of anything linked with Japanese culture, Myaida found employment in a nursery. In the late 1950s, Japanese-style gardens experienced a renaissance in the United States, and Myaida successfully reestablished his professional landscape career, creating gardens that were neither entirely Japanese nor Western. The Japanese-style garden at the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in Washington, D.C. remains as one of the best public examples of his work.

This picture is part of the Landscaping America: Beyond the Japanese Garden exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum, which will run from June 17, 2007 until October 21, 2007. To learn more about Landscaping America, please visit the Japanese American National Museum website.

Copyright is held by the Japanese American National Museum. Short-term educational use with limited circulation is permitted. For all other uses, please contact the Hirasaki National Resource Center at the Japanese American National Museum (hnrc@janm.org)