Garyu Sanso (Villa)

Garyu Sanso stands above a bend of the Hiji River. It is a villa in the sukiya manner, the style that grew out of the tea house, and it was built at the turn of the twentieth century by a merchant who had made a fortune in wax.

The stretch of river below the villa is the finest point on the Hiji, and it had been valued long before there was a house here. The third lord of Ozu named the place Garyu, the sleeping dragon, after the shape of the hill opposite, and planted it with cherries from Yoshino and maples from Tatsuta. It was a pleasure ground for the lords of the domain, and after the Meiji Restoration it was left to go wild.

Kochi Torajiro, who came from near Ozu and grew rich trading wax out of Kobe, bought the site to retire to. He spent ten years planning the house and four years building it, from about 1897, and died in 1909, not long after it was finished.

The main house, Garyuin, is single storey and thatched, in the manner of a farmhouse, and built from timber selected all over the country. One room is made for summer, with a high ceiling and carvings of water through the seasons. Another can have its mats lifted to become a stage for noh, with Bizen jars set under the floor to carry the sound. A third takes its idea from a temple room in Kyoto: a round window with the altar behind it, so that a candle lit there reads as a moon behind mist.

Furoan is built out over the cliff above the water, held up on posts, and is meant to be read as a boat. The ceiling is woven bamboo shaped like a hull. The moon rises over the hill opposite, and the light off the river is thrown up onto that ceiling to light the room.

A third building, Chishian, was the bath house, and was made into a tea room in 1949.

The villa is a Cultural Property of Ehime Prefecture, and the grounds are a Cultural Property of the city.