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Chiyo’s Garden

Wing Luke Museum

Seattle, WA

Designed by artists Rumi Koshino and Yuki Kunugi, the four colorful sculpture forms represent the four Murakami children – Chiyo, Aya, Masa and Kay. Alabastro Photography. Courtesy of Wing Luke Museum.

Chiyo’s Garden honors the Murakami family’s daughter Chiyo. Born in 1915, Chiyo Murakami was the second-oldest daughter of Sanzo and Matsuyo Murakami, who originally built the adjacent Jackson Building in Seattle’s Japantown (Nihonmachi). She died tragically young at age 22, succumbing to tuberculosis in an upstairs room in the Jackson Building on January 3, 1937. The Wing Luke Museum partnered with the Murakami family and KOBO at Higo in 2012 to transform a plot of land behind the Jackson Building into Chiyo’s Garden, pay tribute to Chiyo and her siblings, and evoke the spirit of children growing up in Nihonmachi.