Hoichi Kurisu

Hoichi Kurisu (栗栖宝一, Kurisu Hōichi) is a Japanese-American landscape architect who designs Japanese gardens in the United States.

Biography

Kurisu was born in 1939.[1] He was six years old and living in Sunami (now part of Mihara), a village outside of Hiroshima, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.[1][2][3] According to Kurisu, he and his family were protected from the blast by a mountain that stood between their home and the bombing site.[4]

In 1963, he traveled to California, taking up landscaping work in Los Angeles with his father and stepbrothers. He returned to Japan in 1964 to study landscape design and construction under Kenzo Ogata at Waseda University.[1][5]

He then was Landscape director for the Garden Society of Japan (Nihon Teien Kyokai) (1968–1972), during which time he supervised construction of the Portland Japanese Garden. In 1972, he founded Kurisu International, Inc., and began designing, building, and maintaining gardens, primarily for residential clients in Portland, Oregon.[1][6] The firm expanded to have a nursery and 80 employees by the mid-1990s.[1]

Kurisu designed the Roji-en Japanese Gardens at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, a set of six gardens representing 1,000 years of Japanese horticultural tradition from the 9th to the 20th centuries. They were completed in 2001.[7] Kurisu designed gardens at the Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, in Lebanon, Oregon, which was the winner of a 2006 "Healthcare Environment Award for Landscape Design".[8][9]

Kurisu is married to Judy Kurisu and the two have a daughter, Michiko, who has worked with him at the Kurisu LLC design and construction firm since 1999.[3][10]

Awards and commendations

Kurisu has received two U.S. National Landscape Awards.[11] In 2025, he received a commendation from Shigeo Yamada, ambassador of Japan to the United States.[12]

Selected works

See also

  • Takuma Tono

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Brown, Kendall H. (2017). Visionary landscapes: Japanese garden design in North America: the work of five contemporary masters. David M. Cobb. Tokyo Rutland, Vermont Singapore: Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-4-8053-1386-2.
  2. ^ Kaczmarczyk, Jeffrey (16 February 2012). "Meijer Japanese Garden designer lived through 1945 atomic bomb in Hiroshima". mlive. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  3. ^ a b Knickerbocker, Brad (6 September 1994). "Making a Space for the Heart". www.csmonitor.com. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  4. ^ a b "Restorative Landscapes: An Afternoon with Hoichi Kurisu". Portland Japanese Garden. 4 January 2018. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  5. ^ "25 must-see buildings in Illinois". USA TODAY. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  6. ^ a b "History". Anderson Japanese Gardens. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  7. ^ Swick, Thomas (May 2011). "Florida's lush Japanese gardens". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  8. ^ "Portfolio: Healthcare spaces". Kurisu.Com. Archived from the original on 19 June 2010. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
  9. ^ Alex Paul (6 October 2004). "Lebanon Hospital healing garden a cutting edge way to heal, relieve". New Era. Archived from the original on 13 July 2011.
  10. ^ "About". North American Japanese Garden Association. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  11. ^ a b c "Tour of Portland Japanese Gardens". Yale School of Management. 5 May 2013. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  12. ^ "Commendations by the Ambassador of Japan to the U.S." Embassy of Japan in the United States of America. 1 May 2025. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
  13. ^ "The Richard & Helen DeVos Japanese Garden". www.meijergardens.org. Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. Retrieved 14 December 2017.
  14. ^ Arndt Anderson, Heather (1 September 2021). "A Japanese Garden Master Goes to Prison—and Everyone Feels Better". Aerate. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
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