Tokugawa Akitake, the last (11th) lord of the Mito Tokugawa house, was dispatched to the 1867 Paris Exposition as the shogun's representative and spent about five years in Europe and America. Drawing on that experience, he built the Japanese-style Tojo-tei villa on this Matsudo hillside in 1884. After retiring from public duties he made it his principal residence, and his brother Yoshinobu frequently came here to share his hobbies — making the estate an emblem of the Tokugawa family's transition into the modern era.