Seifu-so was built as a villa of the Tokudaiji family in 1732, during the reign of Emperor Koumei. At the time the villa was surrounded by fields and bamboo groves and must have felt like an oasis of refinement among peasantry. In a way it still is, although the field and bamboo have been replaced by ugly concrete buildings and Imadegawa street, one of the wide arteries of Kyoto. After the Tokudaiji family, the villa was used by the Duke Saionji (公爵西園寺) as his residence in Kyoto. The duke remodelled and enlarged the buildings in 1910, redesigned the garden and built the tea house. All was done in the beautiful and traditional sukiya style. Imadegawa street was already noisy at the time, so the east building was moved four meters to allow the construction of a wall to shield the noise.
Originally the pond and the waterfall were fed by the Otagawa river, which is now a simple pipe running under Imadegawa street. The water is thus stored in buffer tanks where it settles before feeding the two waterfalls found on the grounds: one is apparently the 'male', the other the 'female' (don't ask why ;) The grounds of the villa used to be larger, but the owners agreed to sell part of the land to Kyoto city when the need for a wider Imadegawa street arose. Damn Imagedawa street!
At the death of Saionji, Seifu-so was maintained by the Sumitomo family until it was given to Kyoto University in 1944 in memory of the Duke who helped founding the university. Nowadays the villa is used by the university as a place to entertain important guests and hold cultural events. It is also the place where the student tea ceremony group gathers. Not a bad place to have tea indeed :-)
Seifu-so is not open to the public. Visiting Seifu-so was therefore a rare privilege: we were allowed to have the place for ourselves for a few hours, completely isolated from the mayhem that Kyoto can become during the peak season in November. Important renovation works started at the end of 2013, just after our visit, and were completed in early 2015. Recommended for: Access: free Nearby: the Koinobori Guest House こいのぼり (330m), Chion-ji 知恩寺 (450m), the Mitsui-Shimogamo Villa 旧三井家下鴨別邸 (470m), Kawai-jinja 河合神社 (710m), the Shigemori Mirei Residence 重森三玲庭園美術館 (800m), Sawata-sha 雑太社 (800m), Honman-ji 本満寺 (820m), Rozan-ji 廬山寺 (880m), Budda-ji 佛陀寺 (910m), Yoshida-jinja 吉田神社 (940m),... External links: ウィキペディア, Satellite view, Map Keywords: Japan, 日本, Japon, Kyoto, 京都, 南左京, Sakyo-ku, Seifu-sō villa, 清風荘 Statistics: visited on 2 occasions, id 523, 20 photos (11 extra photos can be found in the archive). |
