Many Japanese garden designers and scholars consider the garden you are in the finest Japanese garden outside of Japan. The Portland Japanese Garden was established in 1967 on land in Washington Park, designed as a gesture of reconciliation and cultural exchange between Portland and Japan in the years following World War II, when the forced incarceration of Portland's Japanese American community — one of the largest and most established on the West Coast — had fractured the relationship between the city and Japan that Japanese immigrants had spent decades building. The garden occupies 12.4 acres and contains five distinct garden styles: the Strolling Pond Garden, the Tea Garden, the Natural Garden, the Sand and Stone Garden, and the Flat Garden.
Each represents a different tradition within Japanese garden design, and together they demonstrate the range of aesthetic and philosophical approaches that Japanese garden culture encompasses. The garden was expanded in 2017 with the addition of the Cultural Village, designed by Kengo Kuma, a Japanese architect whose work elsewhere includes the main stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The view of Mount Hood from the garden on a clear day — the volcanic peak framed by Japanese maples and stone lanterns — has become one of the defining images of Portland.
The garden is cared for by a team of Japanese-trained gardeners who maintain it to traditional standards.