The broad approach extending from the pentagonal bridge to the museum building is articulated through the use of vegetation and stone. The slope of the plateau, conceived to integrate the garden with the architecture, was set at the same 17-degree angle as the foothills of Mount Asama mentioned earlier.*10 According to Yamamoto, the plateau was formed using soil excavated from the garden’s undulating terrain after portions of it had been cut and graded. Although the area originally consisted of a rounded hill, the slope was reshaped to a carefully calculated angle, with its form guided by the existing trees growing on the site.

Along this slope, a concrete base was first constructed and then fitted precisely with weathering steel plates. As with the pentagonal bridge, several steel plates were joined together, yet the surface was crafted to appear as a continuous plane rather than a collection of separate elements. Yamamoto notes that this use of weathering steel differed from Wakabayashi’s other interventions on the site. Because the steel was installed on an artificially constructed slope over a concrete foundation, it represented a deliberate demonstration of how Wakabayashi wished iron to be perceived as a material. On this plateau, the tactile materials central to the garden’s conception—plants, stone, and metal—come together as a unified whole while their individual boundaries remain clearly perceptible.

The plateau also generates a variety of viewpoints throughout the garden. Along the route from the pentagonal bridge to the museum building, visitors become aware of the plateau rising to the left, the river and vegetation to the right, and the movement of people through the landscape. From within the museum, the plateau frames an open view across the garden. Looking upward along its slope toward the museum building, Mount Asama appears in the distance. From the southern face of the plateau, the landscape opens into the valley beyond. *11 Seen from these and other perspectives, the plateau functions as a central axis through which multiple views are composed and interconnected. The result is a design guided by a distinct sculptural intention—one that seeks to unite museum architecture and garden, the man-made and the natural, into a single integrated environment.

This zone was conceived as a site for the installation of Wakabayashi’s sculptures. From here, Mount Asama can be seen rising beyond the museum building, forming a striking backdrop to the architecture. Along the boundary facing away from Mount Asama, adjacent to a skating rink that existed at the time, a row of metasequoia trees was planted. Though each tree was only about the thickness of a person’s arm when first planted, they have since grown into towering mature trees.

Regarding the iron bridge located beyond the open lawn, Wakabayashi requested that the bridge be designed without visible girders—or at least with them concealed as much as possible. The resulting structure introduces no unnecessary lines into the garden’s valleys, slopes, and depressions; instead, a simple straight bridge spans the stream at a right angle.

As a steel form seemingly suspended above the water, it is an exceptionally unusual structure. Yamamoto recalls being impressed that such a bridge could be realized from an engineering standpoint. In conventional bridge construction, steel H-beams measuring approximately 50–70 centimeters in depth are typically used to provide structural strength. Wakabayashi deliberately rejected this approach. Rather than exposing a girder beneath the deck, the entire bridge was conceived as a hollow box-like structure, giving it a lighter and more graceful appearance (Fig. 1).

Like the other steel works in the garden, the bridge is hollow inside. Its surfaces are remarkably seamless, free from visible joints, protrusions, or irregularities. A series of openings punctuate the structure, allowing it to register vibrations generated by the wind. As visitors descend the steps and cross the bridge, the view suddenly opens before them, revealing a composition stripped of all unnecessary elements and reduced to its essential sculptural form.

While reshaping the site through deliberate sculptural interventions, Wakabayashi sought wherever possible to preserve the vegetation already growing on the property. Today, the garden is characterized primarily by a woodland of Japanese elms. Around the museum entrance stand katsura trees, while elsewhere the grounds are populated by larches, maples, Japanese walnuts, metasequoias, firs, Japanese yews, dogwoods, and other species.

On the southern slopes, Caulophyllum robustum and various ferns emerge in spring, while large colonies of Sanguisorba hakusanensis flourish in summer, accompanied by scattered stands of cardiocrinum lilies. During the flowering season, the migratory chestnut tiger butterfly (Parantica sita) can often be seen passing through the garden.

The stream that runs through the site originates from Sengataki Falls. In summer, its banks are lined with the yellow blossoms of Ligularia fischeri as well as the white flowers of Japanese angelica and related species. The mosses that carpet much of the garden consist primarily of haircap mosses and sphagnum mosses, together with several other varieties. On the northern slopes, dwarf bamboo appears in spring, while Japanese knotweed and wild thistles become prominent in summer. Numerous other wildflowers bloom throughout the year, though at times the luxuriant growth of grasses can obscure them from view.

Wakabayashi’s garden, conceived as an extension of the foothills of Mount Asama, became a monumental sculptural landscape that revealed the site’s underlying topography through the shaping of valleys, depressions, and slopes of varying angles. As he envisioned it, “Only when sunlight and rain fall upon it, when moisture and the distinctive mists of this region linger, when leaves accumulate, and when the colors of seasonal vegetation fill these hollowed spaces, can a ‘contemporary garden’ truly come into being.”*13

Because the vegetation was still immature at the time of completion, Wakabayashi believed that the garden would not reach its full expression until approximately three years later. The metasequoias planted then have since grown into towering trees, while countless plants have continued their cycles of growth and decay, transforming the garden year by year.

Seen from the present, the vision realized here some forty years ago appears almost prophetic in anticipating contemporary concerns with coexistence between human activity and the natural environment. Unconstrained by prevailing assumptions and always directed toward what lay beyond them, Wakabayashi’s perspective continues to shape this landscape. As the garden of a museum of contemporary art, it will no doubt continue to reveal new vistas and meanings in the years to come.

Rieko Sakamoto (Curator, Sezon Museum of Modern Art)