The gardens were built for Baron Toranosuke Furukawa, the third-generation head of the Furukawa zaibatsu, an industrial conglomerate founded by his father Furukawa Ichibei. The elder Furukawa had acquired the Ashio Copper Mine in 1877 and built it into one of Japan's most productive mining operations, at its peak producing over half of the nation's copper. The fortune was immense, and the son inherited both the wealth and the title. Baron Toranosuke chose this hillside in Nishigahara, in Tokyo's Kita ward, for his private residence. The land had previously belonged to Mutsu Munemitsu, a Meiji-era statesman. Furukawa wanted something that would announce his family's standing in both the Western and Japanese worlds -- a home that could receive foreign dignitaries in European style and still retreat into the quiet aesthetics of traditional Japan.

For the Western mansion and its surrounding garden, Furukawa hired Josiah Conder, the English architect who had arrived in Tokyo in 1877 and designed more than fifty significant Western-style buildings across the city. Known as the father of Japanese modern architecture, Conder had shaped the Meiji-era cityscape: the Rokumeikan ballroom, Holy Resurrection Cathedral, and the Iwasaki family estate were all his work. The mansion at Furukawa Gardens, completed around 1917, was among Conder's final projects. Built of dark stone in a sober Tudor-inspired style, the building features a second floor with tatami rooms -- a characteristically Conder touch, blending Western forms with Japanese domestic life. The formal garden surrounding the mansion follows French principles of symmetry, with terraced beds descending the hillside in strict geometric order. Today, over ninety varieties of roses fill those beds, blooming twice each year in spring and autumn.

While Conder shaped the hilltop, the lower garden was entrusted to Ogawa Jihei VII, one of the great landscape architects of his era. Known in Kyoto as a magician of water, Ogawa had designed the gardens of the Heian Shrine, Maruyama Park, and the celebrated Murin-an villa. His work at Furukawa Gardens, completed in 1919, followed the tradition of the Japanese stroll garden -- a landscape meant to be experienced in motion, revealing new compositions with each step along the winding path. The heart-shaped pond anchors the design, fed by a waterfall that tumbles over carefully arranged stones. Nearby, a dry waterfall -- the karetaki -- uses stacked boulders and gravel to evoke the movement of rushing water without any actual flow. Stone lanterns and moss-covered pathways complete the scene. The contrast with the hilltop above is deliberate and startling: rigid geometry gives way to studied naturalism within a few dozen meters of walking.

The park opened to the public in 1956 and has been maintained as a Tokyo metropolitan park ever since, with admission set at a modest 150 yen. The seasonal rhythms draw visitors in predictable waves -- the rose garden peaks from late April through mid-May and again in October, while the Japanese garden is at its most photogenic during the autumn maple season. The guesthouse on the grounds gained an unexpected cultural afterlife when it was used as a visual reference in the mystery visual novel Umineko When They Cry, and the gardens appeared in the first episode of the Super Sentai series Choujin Sentai Jetman. But the real drama of the place is architectural. Conder and Ogawa never worked together, yet here their visions sit side by side on a single slope, each one a masterclass in its own tradition. The mansion looks out over the rose garden with European composure. The pond below reflects stone lanterns and maple branches. Between them, a hillside holds two civilizations in balance.