The garden's bones are older than Iwasaki. According to tradition, the site may have once belonged to Kinokuniya Bunzaemon, the legendary Edo-period merchant whose shipping fortune rivaled any feudal lord's. By the 1720s, the feudal lord Kuze Yamatonokami of the Sekiyado Domain had built his mansion here, and the basic shape of the garden -- a central lake surrounded by a walking path -- dates to that era. But when Iwasaki acquired the land in the Meiji era, he transformed it completely. Beginning in 1878, he ordered hills built, dry waterfalls constructed from massive stones, and the pond enlarged by channeling water from the nearby Sumida River. By 1880, the garden opened as a private retreat for Mitsubishi employees and distinguished guests. The man who moved goods across oceans had turned his logistical genius inward, creating a landscape where every stone had been shipped as carefully as any cargo.

The genius of Kiyosumi lies in its isowatari -- stepping stone paths that cross the pond's shallow inlets. These flat-topped boulders, spaced just far enough apart to demand attention, force visitors to slow down and look. And what they see, looking down, is the garden's secret life: koi carp drift in lazy circuits, freshwater turtles surface between the stones, and ducks paddle through reflections of Japanese black pine. The pond nearly fills the entire garden. Three islands break its surface, one connected by a small bridge, and a teahouse overlooks the water. Over four thousand trees crowd this contained space -- mostly Japanese black pine, with purple azaleas, hydrangeas, Japanese irises, and Taiwan cherry providing seasonal bursts of color. The effect is one of compression: a vast landscape miniaturized, an entire country's worth of scenery distilled into a single walk around a single lake.

On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake struck Tokyo with devastating force. In the fires that swept through the city afterward, Kiyosumi Garden became an accidental sanctuary. Citizens from the surrounding Fukagawa neighborhood fled into the garden, and its open water and sparse perimeter saved lives while the densely built blocks around it burned. The garden survived as a refuge, though not without damage. In 1932, the Mitsubishi group donated the garden to Tokyo City, and after repairs it opened to the public for the first time. Nearly half a century later, on March 31, 1979, the garden was officially designated a Tokyo Metropolitan Place of Scenic Beauty. Today, a stone monument near the entrance bears one of the most famous poems in the Japanese language -- Matsuo Basho's haiku: 'an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water.' The poet lived in this neighborhood during the 1680s, and the quiet of the garden still carries the quality he captured -- stillness broken by a single, perfect sound.

Walk the perimeter path and the stones speak. The Iwasaki family's collection reads like a geological atlas of Japan: volcanic basalt from one province, river-smoothed granite from another, coastal sandstone shaped by Pacific waves from a third. Some stones stand alone as sculptural objects. Others are grouped into dry waterfalls -- karesansui arrangements where cascading rock suggests rushing water without a single drop. The flagstones underfoot, the isowatari crossing stones, the boulders anchoring hillsides -- the total count is immense. Narrow perimeter plantings screen the garden from Kiyosumi Dori, the busy avenue just beyond the trees, creating the illusion that the city has vanished entirely. Standing on the stepping stones at the pond's edge, watching a turtle pull itself onto a warm rock as pine shadows shift across the water, it is easy to forget that Tokyo's glass towers stand just meters away. Iwasaki built a garden to impress his guests. He ended up building a place that outlasted his empire.