Kyū-Furukawa Gardens
park in Japan

Kyū-Furukawa Gardens (旧古河庭園, kyū-furukawa teien) is a Tokyo metropolitan park in Nishigahara, Kita, Tokyo. The park includes a Western-style mansion, a Western-style rose garden, and a Japanese-style garden, all of which were built in early 20th century.
Outline
The gardens were built by Baron Toranosuke Furukawa. The Western-style mansion and garden were designed by English architect Josiah Conder and were completed by 1917. Conder was called the "father of Japanese modern architecture" and also designed Rokumeikan, Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden, and Holy Resurrection Cathedral. The Japanese garden was designed by Ogawa Jihei VII and was completed in 1919.
Baron Furukawa was the owner of Furukawa zaibatsu which owned Ashio copper mine.
Western building and garden
The exterior of the building and the ground floor rooms are designed in the Western style, but the second floor rooms are mostly in Japanese style with tatami mats. The mansion is built on a steep slope of Musashino Terrace. The building is located on the top of a hill, with the Western-style garden on the slope, and Japanese garden on the bottom.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kyū-Furukawa Gardens” is park in Japan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kyū-Furukawa, Gardens and park, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3082256. VIAF identifies the subject as 252684446. Authority coordinates are 35.743, 139.747. 2 of 10 selected statements include explicit references; 7 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kyū-Furukawa Gardens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.