Welcome Rock Arrangement By Dick Yamasaki

Seattle Japanese Garden At Washington Park Arboretum
By Koichi Kobayashi

SJG •  “Welcome Rock Arrangement by Dick Yamasaki “ - photo by Koichi Kobayashi

SJG •  “Welcome Rock Arrangement by Dick Yamasaki “ - photo by Koichi Kobayashi

This is a story about a set of rock installment.

I have been trying to determine who is responsible for placing an impressive set of rock you can see on your left hand side of pathway right after entering current south gate at the Seattle Japanese Garden at Washington Park Arboretum. It is widely known that most of rock installation in this garden was executed by Yamasaki/Yorozu team and supervised by Juki Iida during 1959-1960 construction period.  But this set of rock is very powerful and is not a typical rock set as seen in other gardens produced by Juki Iida and other parts of this garden.

 Area between the current entrance gate to WPA vintage stone bridge was not completed by end of initial construction and there was no entrance at the south end of the garden.  I verified this by examining original construction drawing and as built drawing produced by Nobumasa Kitamura of Tokyo Metropolitan Parks Department.  It has been documented that completion of this area was supervised by Dick Yamasaki who was also responsible for installing rock retaining wall on the north end of lake. I speculated that Dick Yamasaki installed this set of rocks.

In a strange encountering recently with Larry Hettick who is married to Suzie, who is related to Fumi Yamasaki, wife of Dick Yamasaki, Larry was told by Dick Yamasaki that Dick Yamasaki himself installed this rock arrangement.  That cleared my speculation over a long time.  Now I would like to propose to name this rock arrangement as “Welcome Rock Arrangement by Dick Yamasaki “.

For more (supporting documents for this article) go here.