Taki Handa

Taki Handa
A Japanese woman of middle age, wearing a dark kimono, seated, with hands folded in her lap.
Undated photographer of Taki Handa, from a 2015 publication.
Born1871
Kurume, Kyushu
Died1956
Other namesHanda Taki, Nakanome Taki, Taki Nakanome
Occupation(s)Horticulturist, landscape designer

Taki Handa (1871–1956) was a Japanese horticulturist, best known for designing and directing the construction of a Japanese garden in Scotland in 1908.

Early life

Handa was born in Kurume, Kyushu. Her father was a prison guard who also mended umbrellas; her older brother Handa Hisao was a military physician and helped support the family. She studied Chinese literature, weaving, and English as a girl, and was baptised as a Christian at age 16, then trained to be a teacher at a school in Fukuoka.[1] She attended Doshisha Women's College in Kyoto, and Mary Florence Denton, an American faculty member there, encouraged Handa to seek further studies abroad.[2][3] She attended Studley College in England from 1906 to 1908.[2][4]

Career

Handa taught in Tokyo for a few years as a young woman. In 1908, while living in Britain, Handa designed a seven-acre garden at Cowden Castle in Clackmannanshire for Ella Christie,[2] who had traveled extensively in Asia and wanted to recreate the Japanese garden aesthetic.[1][5] The garden was admired and popular,[6][7] and Christie continued to employ Japanese caretakers for the garden, pond, and teahouse, to maintain Handa's ideas.[8] In 1955, after Christie had died and Cowden Castle was demolished, the Japanese Garden was closed to public visits; in time, it was vandalised and fell into ruin.[4][9]

On her return to Japan, Handa taught botany, horticulture and English at Doshisha Women's College in Kyoto. She retired from teaching in 1919, and was in charge of a family orchard at Mizusawa beginning in the 1920s, until 1932, when she left the operation in her stepson's care.[2]

Handa was a fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society.[10]

Personal life

Handa married in 1910, to Seiichi Nakanome, a widowed physician with six children. They had two daughters together. "Within two years getting married, I became a wife, a mother and a grandmother, which are all interesting experiences for me," she wrote in 1912.[2] She was widowed when her husband died in 1938; she died in 1956, in her mid-eighties.[2]

Taki Nakanome's granddaughter Tamae Hoshi visited the Japanese Garden in Clackmannanshire in 2010. Restoration began in 2013 by Christie's great-great-niece Sara Stewart,[8] and the garden was reopened to visitors in 2019.[4][11]

References

  1. ^ a b Raggett, Jill; Kajihara-Nolan, Yuka; Nolan, Jason (2013-01-01). "Handa Taki (1871–1956)". Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VIII: 332–350. doi:10.1163/9789004246461_027. ISBN 9789004246461.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Tachibana, Setsu (2014). "The "Capture" of Exotic Natures: Cross-cultural Knowledge and Japanese Gardening in Early 20th Century Britain". Japanese Journal of Human Geography. 66 (6): 492–506. doi:10.4200/jjhg.66.6_492. ISSN 0018-7216.
  3. ^ Clapp, Frances Benton (1955). Mary Florence Denton and the Doshisha. Doshisha University Press. p. 76.
  4. ^ a b c "History". Cowden Garden. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
  5. ^ "The Japanese Garden at Cowden Castle". Scottish Land & Estates. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
  6. ^ Middleton, Catherine. "The Best Japanese Garden in the West" Historic Environment Scotland (31 August 2018).
  7. ^ Campbell, Margaret (2015). "A Place of Pleasure and Delight". Historic Gardens Review (32): 26–30. ISSN 1461-0191. JSTOR 44790090.
  8. ^ a b "Recognition for Japanese garden at Cowden Castle". BBC News. 2013-09-05. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
  9. ^ "Japanese garden vandalised in 1960s to reopen". BBC News. 2016-05-12. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
  10. ^ Royal Horticultural Society (Great Britain) (1908). Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. pp. ccxv.
  11. ^ "The Japanese Garden at Cowden". Discover Scottish Gardens. Retrieved 2020-10-15.