Just 20 km east of Matsue, the impressive collection of paintings and ceramics at the Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, is at risk of being upstaged by its six superlative landscaped gardens.
The museum and its surrounding horticultural wonders await visitors today thanks to three men: an art epicure, a painter and a master landscape gardener.
Zenko Adachi (1899-1990), a collector and garden connoisseur, died at the ripe old age of 92, content with having blended two art forms here in this museum in the remote rural place of his birth, from where he went on to become a successful textile merchant and real estate dealer in Osaka.