Japan at Kew Gardens: The Japanese Gateway at Kew, the Minka House and More

Grey rocks, raked gravel, clipped shrubs. Behind them, a dark wooden gate under a curved roof, with the first autumn colour showing in the trees around it. This corner of Kew Gardens, near Lion Gate, is the closest thing London has to a walk through Kyoto.

I first came here for Kew's Japan festival in October 2021, with its red threads in the Temperate House and a floor of steel flowers in the gallery. The festival is long over. The gate, the gravel and the little farmhouse in the Bamboo Garden are permanent, and they are what is left to visit.

What Is the Japanese Gateway at Kew?

The Japanese Gateway at Kew is the Chokushi-Mon, which translates as the Gateway of the Imperial Messenger. It is a four-fifths scale replica of the Karamon gate of the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto.

Kew describes it as built in the late 16th-century Momoyama style, the ornate architecture of Japan's age of warlords and castles. The timber is Japanese hinoki cypress. Historic England listed it at Grade II on 10 January 1950.

It sits on a low wall at the top of a gentle slope, and the Japanese Landscape falls away below it. From the gravel, the gate is the backdrop to everything.

Why Is a Gate from a 1910 Exhibition Standing in Kew Gardens?

The Chokushi-Mon was made for the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 at White City, in Shepherd's Bush. That show was a large display of Japanese craft, gardens and industry, staged to celebrate the alliance between the two countries.

When the exhibition closed, the gate was given to Kew. According to Kew's own account of it, the gate moved to the Gardens in 1911. It has stood here ever since, which makes it older in this spot than most of the trees around it.

The link is still alive. On 27 June 2024 the Emperor of Japan visited Kew during his state visit. He toured the Temperate House and heard about Kew's bonsai collection, which Kew put at around 60 trees, the oldest about 180 years old.

What Do the Carvings on the Chokushi-Mon Show?

Stand close and the woodwork is busy. Kew lists stylised flowers, animals, plants and human figures in the carving. Some panels tell an old legend about a pupil's devotion to his master.

The roof is copper. It replaced the original cedar bark roof during a restoration that ran from October 1994 to November 1995, combining traditional Japanese methods with modern ones.

In January 2024 Kew applied to Richmond Council for a further round of repairs. The problems listed were loose carved brackets, timber decay, tarnished copper and roosting pigeons. The conservation firm DBR announced the work complete on 1 August 2025, including cleaning of the carvings and the copper roof.

What Are the Three Gardens in Kew's Japanese Landscape?

The Japanese Landscape was laid out in 1996, after the gate's restoration, to a design by Professor Fukuhara of Osaka University. Princess Sayako of Japan opened the restored gateway and the garden that year. She planted a northern Japanese magnolia, Magnolia kobus.

It is made of three parts. The Garden of Peace is in the style of a tea garden, with stone lanterns and a dripping water basin. The Garden of Activity is the slope, where rocks and raked gravel stand in for waterfalls, mountains and the sea.

The Garden of Harmony joins the two. It has large rocks and outcrops, clipped hedges of Rhododendron 'Mother's Day' and Japanese anemones.

Some curiosities from Kew's gardeners. About 17 tonnes of gravel went into the landscape. It is raked every week into waves, circles and straight lines, with a wooden rake made at Kew, and the job takes about an hour.

Once a year, in September or October depending on the lunar calendar, the gravel is raked into a chequerboard for tsukimi, the autumn moon viewing.

Look for the haiku stone too. It carries a haiku written in 1936 by the poet Kyoshi Takahama, ending with the words "England in Spring". His daughter added the stone in 1979.

What Is the Minka House at Kew?

A short walk away, in the Bamboo Garden, is the Minka House. Minka means houses of the people, and this is a wooden farmhouse with a thatched roof and mud walls.

It was first put up around 1900 in a suburb of Okazaki, in central Japan. Kew says the Yonezu family lived in it after their main house was bombed in 1945. The Japan Minka Reuse and Recycle Association gave it to Kew for the Japan 2001 festival.

It came over by container ship to Southampton in 2001. Japanese carpenters rebuilt the timber frame. The mud wall panels were made by British builders, some of whom had worked on Shakespeare's Globe.

Around the entrance grow sacred bamboo bushes, Nandina domestica 'Firepower'. In Japanese tradition they are thought to keep bad dreams away. The Bamboo Garden itself holds around 130 kinds of bamboo from China, Japan, the Himalaya and the Americas.

Is the Great Pagoda at Kew Japanese?

No, though it is easy to assume so from the Japanese Landscape next door. The Great Pagoda was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1762, and its model was Chinese. Chambers had been to China and drew on the Porcelain Pagoda at Nanjing.

It is ten storeys and 50 metres high, with 253 steps to the top. It first carried 80 gilded wooden dragons, removed in 1784. Replacements went back up in 2018, some carved in timber and most 3D printed.

One more oddity. During the Second World War, holes were cut through each floor so that model bombs could be drop-tested down the middle.

The Pagoda climb is run by Historic Royal Palaces. Kew's opening page says the Historic Royal Palaces sites close from 28 September 2026 until spring 2027, so check before planning a climb.

When Is the Best Time to See Autumn Leaves at Kew?

The Japanese have a word for going out to look at autumn leaves: momijigari. In 2021 Kew built a 1.5-mile Momijigari Trail around it, taking in the Japanese Gateway, the Ginkgo Grove and the Minka House.

The trail was part of the festival, but the trees are all still there. In most years the colour builds through October into early November. For a wider round-up, I keep a list of the best places to see autumn foliage in London.

Two of Kew's Old Lions, trees planted in 1762, have Asian stories. The ginkgo, a species from a family around 200 million years old, turns butter yellow in autumn. The Japanese pagoda tree beside the Hive is really from China and Korea. Kew notes it got its name from temple gardens in Japan.

The Japanese Landscape has spring moments too. The great white cherry, Prunus 'Taihaku', flowers here. Kew tells how it was thought lost in Japan by the 1920s until the collector Collingwood Ingram propagated it. For more Japanese azaleas in spring, the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park is close by.

What Was the Japan Festival at Kew Gardens in 2021?

Kew's Japan festival ran from 2 to 31 October 2021. Most of it happened in and around the Temperate House, the Victorian glasshouse in the middle of the Gardens.

In the Temperate House there was a chrysanthemum display: six varieties of kiku, Japan's national flower, in orange, yellow and white. Kew's horticulture team designed it. The octagons held a Chalk Garden of white English limestone with Japanese planting, including maples and bamboo.

The centrepiece hung from the roof. Chiharu Shiota's One Thousand Springs was a web of red threads holding 5,000 haikus about nature, sent in by members of the public from around the world. From the floor it looked like a red cloud over the palms.

Below it played a soundscape by the Japanese sound designer Yosi Horikawa. It was made from recordings of Japanese rivers, waterfalls, cedar mountains and bird calls. On a few Friday and Saturday evenings there was also Japan After Hours, with dance, sake tasting and origami.

What Was Blackfield at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery?

Running alongside the festival, the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art showed Zadok Ben-David's exhibition Natural Reserve. It opened in October 2021 and was extended to 24 April 2022, after more than 30,000 visitors.

Its centrepiece was Blackfield, a floor installation of over 17,000 etched steel flowers, each assembled by hand by volunteers and assistants. The motifs come from illustrations in 19th-century Victorian encyclopedias. Kew says the piece has been shown in more than 20 countries.

The trick is in the viewing angle. From one side, the whole field reads in bright colour. Walk round, and the same flowers turn into black silhouettes, like a field after a fire.

Another work in the show, The Other Side of Midnight, was a circle three metres across of over 2,000 painted butterflies and insects.

Kew's galleries and glasshouses change their programme every season. For a smaller garden with its own curiosities, the Chelsea Physic Garden is worth an afternoon. And in winter, Kew itself turns into a light trail, which I wrote up in Christmas at Kew Gardens.

Visiting the Japanese Gateway at Kew: Practical Notes

📍 Where: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond TW9 3AE. The Japanese Landscape is in the south of the Gardens, just north of the Great Pagoda, with the Minka House in the Bamboo Garden nearby.

⏰ Opening: For autumn 2026: 10am to 7pm in September, 10am to 6pm from 1 to 24 October, and 10am to 4pm from 25 October to 11 November. Then 10am to 3.15pm until 3 January 2027. Last entry an hour before closing (45 minutes in winter). Glasshouses 10am to 5pm.

📅 Open days: Daily. Lion Gate, the closest entrance to the Japanese Landscape, opens at weekends only from November 2026 to January 2027.

🎫 Admission: For 2026: adults £25 online or £28 at the gate from 2 September to 31 October, then £17 online from 1 November. Children 4 to 15 from £2 online, under 4s free. Kew runs £10 Tuesdays from 8 September to 29 December 2026.

🚇 Getting there: Kew Gardens station (District line and Overground) is 500m from Victoria Gate. Richmond station is 15 to 25 minutes' walk from Lion Gate. Buses 65, 110, 237 and 267.

🚗 Parking: Kew's car park by Brentford Gate charges £10 a day, first come, first served. Blue Badge holders park free.

☕ Food: The Pavilion Bar and Grill is the nearest restaurant to the Pagoda. Picnics are allowed throughout the Gardens.

⏳ How long: An hour for the gateway, the Japanese Landscape and the Minka House. A full day for Kew.

📷 Best time: Late October to early November for autumn colour, April for the cherries.

🗺️ Nearby: The Great Pagoda, the Temperate House and the Treetop Walkway inside Kew. Outside, Richmond, Ham House and Richmond Park.

♿ Access: The landscape is on a gentle slope with gravel. Kew has wheelchairs to borrow and accessible toilets.

If you head on to Ham House or the river afterwards, Richmond makes a full day. Have you ever seen the gravel raked for the moon, or caught the Taihaku cherry in flower?

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All photos were taken by Ina/WithinLondon, unless stated otherwise.