Mr. Myaida settled in America in the mid-1920s and designed gardens in both European and Asian styles throughout the 20s and 30s, including two Japanese-style gardens for the Nippon Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York in 1939.  With the rise of hostilities between the United States and Japan during the 1940s and the aftermath of the Second Word War, Mr. Myaida faced both personal and professional discrimination as Japanese culture fell out of favor.  However, in the late 1950s he began to reestablish his clientele as Japanese art and gardens came back into vogue. 

 
In the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Myaida’s gardens demonstrated a Japanese-American style that moved beyond the predominant prewar “oriental expressions” that simply stuck Japanese elements haphazardly into the American landscape.  Mr. Myaida artfully blended American and Asian gardening traditions and elements with an understanding of the differences between the two cultures.  He accepted that a traditional Japanese garden in America would cease to be authentic after several years of American maintenance.  As he stated in an 1988 interview:

". . . I would rather not make Japanese garden . . .but make a creative, little American-Japanese . . . anyway, suitable to most of the property . . . suitable to personality . . . so I tell them, I making garden for you but your garden . . ."

Photograph of Shogo J. Myaida courtesy of the Japanese American National Museum.
Garden photographs provided by Hillwood Museum and Gardens Archives.