Nagaoka Yasuhei
Nagaoka Yasuhei (1842–1925) was born in Omura and is regarded as Japan’s first modern landscape designer. Many of the public parks and gardens across Japan were either created by Nagaoka or inspired by him. He leveraged the natural geography of the land in his designs and planted flowering trees for the enjoyment of visitors.
Nagaoka began work as a civil engineer, landscaping the moat of the Imperial Palace in 1878. He was subsequently invited to design public parks and gardens in Tokyo and across Japan, and eventually worked on 41 parks from Hokkaido to Kyushu, including Senshu Park at Kubota Castle in Akita and Shiba Park in Tokyo. In 1884, Nagaoka brought some one thousand cherry trees from Tokyo to plant on the grounds of Kushima Castle to commemorate the newly built Omura Shrine.