Seizansō

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Seizansō (西山荘), also called Nishiyama Goten, was the retirement villa of Tokugawa Mitsukuni, the second daimyō of the Mito Domain in Japan’s Edo period. It is in Hitachiōta, Ibaraki Prefecture.

The villa was built in 1690, and Mitsukuni lived there from 1691 until his death in 1700. At Seizansō, he gathered scholars from around Japan to work on Dai Nihonshi, a history of Japan, which was finished about 15 years after his death.

The building burned down in 1817 and was rebuilt in 1819 by Tokugawa Narinobu, the 8th daimyō of Mito. Today, Seizansō is part of the Tokugawa Museum and is open to the public as a museum. It is a single-story thatched-roof house with plain interior walls, reflecting Mitsukuni’s dislike of ostentation. Outside is a smaller samurai residence for guards and a Japanese garden.

In 2007, Seizansō was designated a National Historic Site, and its gardens were named a National Place of Scenic Beauty.