The site's story begins well before the Meiji era. In 1611, the visionary merchant-engineer Suminokura Ryōi excavated the Takase Canal to carry goods from the Kamo River into the heart of Kyoto, and built a retreat at the canal's very source. The garden here grew from that villa, and a tea garden in its corner is still traditionally credited to the great early-Edo tea master and garden-maker Kobori Enshū.↗↗

In 1891, freshly resigned from the premiership, Yamagata Aritomo acquired the old Suminokura ground and established a villa he christened the "Second Murin-an," borrowing the name of a retreat from his home domain in Chōshū. It was a brief chapter: Yamagata let go of the property after only around a year, then went on to commission the far grander Murin-an near Nanzen-ji—the third of his so-named homes—whose garden is the celebrated work of the master gardener Ogawa Jihei VII.↗↗↗

The garden here is likewise associated with Ogawa Jihei, the Kyoto gardener who defined the modern stroll garden, and later owners kept its water and stone alive—including Kawaada Koichiro, a governor of the Bank of Japan, and the industrialist Abe Ichitaro. In the Shōwa era the site even entered literature as the backdrop of Mori Ōgai's short story "Takasebune," a quiet meditation set on the canal Suminokura dug. The house has since been reborn as a restaurant, with the garden preserved as the "Takasegawa Genryū Teien," the Takase Canal source garden.↗↗