Osaka Garden

This guide to Osaka Garden in Chicago opens with a question: why would Kaneji Domoto, a man once imprisoned as a Japanese American during World War Two, agree to redesign a garden for the country that jailed him. It traces the story of the Ho-o-den, a phoenix-shaped pavilion Japan gave Chicago for the 1893 World's Fair, its wartime destruction by fire, and Domoto's patient rebuilding of the moon bridge and stones you're standing beside. Even the waterfall behind it was finished decades later, using stones hauled in from Wisconsin's glaciers.