The Shokado Garden Art Museum in a suburban Kyoto neighborhood offers a respite to visitors with its distinct seasonal variations of flora as well as recreated tea ceremony houses, calligraphy works and brush paintings — all associated with medieval Japanese Buddhist monk Shokado Shojo.
Versed in Shingon Esoteric Buddhism, Shojo (early 1580s-1639) served as a priest at a temple on Otokoyama hill in what is now the city of Yawata, where the museum is also located.
He was one of the most cultured persons in the period, practicing calligraphy, brush paintings, waka poetry and the way of tea and is considered one of the three masters of the Kanei period of the early 17th century for his brush strokes.