Donald Keene wrote the inscribed sentence: "Place of Scenic Beauty: Soka Matsubara - Scenic Place Along Oku-no-Hosomichi"

Donald Keene was a renown professor of Japanese studies (especially literature) at Columbia University in New York. Keene is revered in Soka for helping with local activities related to Oku-no-Hosomichi.
He also famously became a Japanese citizen and spent the last years of his life living in Japan.