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The Chinese-origin Taoist belief in the immortal land has been dominant in landscape gardening since ancient days. But no Horai gardens were build after the middle of the Edo period, partly because the idea of Horai went out of fashion, and partly because the pond had no space for islands.
Crane and Tortoise
The two groups of stones symbolize the crane and tortoise Islands, the Japanese version of the same idea of Horai. The tortoise island is made low like a tortoise crawling; the crane islands high with an old pine tree spreading its boughs and branches wide, so that viewers can easily see the crane from the tortoise.
Boats
The rocks, arranged in the pond between the Horai islet and the edge of the pond, are significant of boats anchoring overnight on its ways to or home from the Buddhist paradise.
Category 日本庭園の分類
１．Strolling-around-the pond style(平安神宮）
２．Boating style (金閣寺)
３．Viewing style (竜安寺)
Buddhist conception of the universe is embodied in the garden. In a Buddhist scripture is described a high mountain called Shumisen standing in the center of the world of Buddhism. Buddha is guarded by divine soldiers living in the mountain. Around the mountain, there are 3 other mountains and 8 seas, consisting the whole domain of the Buddhist world. The 7 rocks in a group represent the Shumisen and the other 8 rocks in groups of 3, 2 and 3 represent the mountains around the Shumisen, described in the Buddhist scripture. The expanse of white sand denotes the 8 seas. The mountain in the background is taken as Buddha ruling the universe. Zen Buddhists tried to see Buddha in silent meditation. (The garden depicts lion cubs crossing a stream of water, though it may be only a superficial way of interpretation of the profound meaning embodied in Zen Buddhism. The stones appear as if rising, against the rapids that run from the east. A popular but superficial interpretation is that the stones depict parent tigers fording (wading across) a stream with three cubs.
In Trio
This pattern is that rocks always are laid in trios, with the center one the highest and the largest. Sometimes one of the of the trio rocks is placed a little away from the other two to give some variation to the rock arrangement. The Sanzon represents Shakyamuni and two Bosatsu or Buddhist saints Boddhisattva. The traditional technique is employed in the arrangement of rocks along the edge of the pond. This technique came to be used more frequently in and after the Muromachi period.
Waterfall
The significance of t}the Japanese gardens is in its symbolism. It is this suggestion or symbolism of nature, not the abstract composition of rocks, that gives them their artistic or philosophical value.
Stream
Tsukiyama
The Tsukiyama, a steep artificial hill, came into vogue in the late Momoyama through early Edo period. Tsukiyama is a landscape gardening technique, of building artificial rocks and shrubs on a natural hillside to make a high peak. It is typical for a waterfall in the Tsukiyama to have a stone bridge spanning it in the middle part. It is also a traditional technique to place a stone bridge in front of the waterfall. The rock under the waterfall is called Mizuwakeishi or stone to divide the water into two.
Bridge
The bridges may be symbolic as the passageway to the ideal place, for which people in those days longed.
Riparian
General 京の庭 - 概略 (Japan Times; Dec. 4, 1967)
Kyoto today boasts over 100 fine landscape gardens well preserved from centuries ago. This is because Kyoto was the seat of the emperor and the center of cultur e for more than 1,000 years, from the Heian period (794-1191) through the Restor ation of Meiji in 1868, and also because of the happy geographical features of K yoto. Many gardens are laid out taking part of the outside scenery into the gard en or making use of such features as streams, ponds and hillsides. The first garden in history appeared during the Asuka period (592-710), with a p ond and an islet in it. This garden was introduced by a Korean immigrant to Japa n. To the Japanese the garden has been somewhat more than a mere copy of a natural scene; it has been a place where the people's unachievable ideals or longings were expressed. Buddhism was one of the greates factors from the begining that made Japanese gar dens symbolic and abstract. Many gardens representing the Buddhist Jodo (Pure Ln Land) were made including Jui's Byodoin, Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji and Saihoji. Taoism whcih originated from ancient China was another factor composing the idea of the Japanese garden. The belief in the immortal land resulted in popular isl ets called Horai and Tsuru-kame in the lake garden. This Taoism later was confus ed with the Buddhist idea of Pure Land. Zen in the Muromachi period also exerted a grat influence on the Japanese garden . It brought forth the most symbolic, philosophical type of garden, karesansui, which is represented by the rock garden of Ryoanji. Chanoyu, introduced together with Zen in the Kamakura period (1192-1336), create d the so-called tea garden, which is characterised by various ornaments such as stone lanterns, stepping stones and stone basins in a small limited space. Many fine tea gardens were made after the Momoyama period (1573-1602), particularly i n the Edo priod.
The garden of the Shodenji Temple of Buddhism's Zen sect is composed of white san d, evergreen shrubs and a white wall. It is composition of utmost simplicity, so eloquent of Zen. It is based on the same concept that brought about the rock garden of the Ryoanji Temple.
The low wall, roofed with tiles, marks the 165 ENCLOSURE ON the east. The snow white wall accentuates the lush green of the shrubs that dot the flat expanse of white sand. The garden has seven clusters of shrubs at the far right, five in t he middle and three on the left, when viewed from the abbot's quarters.
It is said the whole arrangement depicts lion cubs crossing a stretch of water. But this is only of a superficial aspect of the profundity of the principles of Zen as expressed in this garden.
The rounded shape of the pruned shrubs contrast exquisitely with the straight lines of the wall and the gravel surface that is neatly raked in straight parallel lines. This also a striking contrast between the green shrubs and the white wall as well as the sand.
The arrangement trimmed down to sheer simplicity through elimination of foreign matters is in keeping with the tradition of Japanese art. Another example of thi s near-abstract "simplicity" can be seen in ink drawings.
Beyond the law wall is picturesque Mt. Hiei. This technique of make outside scenery a part of the garden is called "shakkei" or borrowing of scenery.
The garden is believed to have been made in the early part of the 17th century. Shodenji was removed to the present site overlooking downtown Kyoto in 1282 from a place near the center of the city. The garden is said to have been designed by Kobori Enshu, noted artist-tea master, but the fact has not net been established.
The garden of Rokuonji temple of the end of the 14th century, Muromachi Period, symbolizes the Buddhist Saiho Amida Jodo or the West Amitabha Pure Land, with its magnificent three-storied Golden Pavilion and the large multiple-islet pond 、just as its model, the garden of Saihoji does.
In the pond, covering some 6,600 square meters of the garden's total space of 16,500 square meters, there are more than several islets of rocks with pine trees growing on them. Called Horai, Tsuru-jima and Kame-jima, these islets represent the then prevalent belief in the Taoist immortal land, which was mixed up with the Buddhist belief of Gokuraku Jodo, or paradise or pure land.
The third Shogun Yoshimitsu of the Ashikaga clan converted the villa of the court noble Saionji, into his Kitayama villa, and constructed the garden in 1397. This garden, therefore, still has features of the Heian period in its large scale, large pond and gently sloping Kinugasa hills in the back.
The Golden Pavilion, with its first floor built in the shinden-zuluri; style, prevalent in the Heian period, has a structure jutting out into the pond, patterned after a tsuridono, or izumidono. The second and third floors of the pavilion are designed as a devotional hall.
A garden constructed in the Muromachi period however, should not be a garden of the Heian period. The angular and imposing rocks in the pond are a trend of the Muromachi period, carried over from the preceding Heian period. To the left close to the Golden Pavilion are rocks called Todomariishi, symbolizing ships anchoring overnight en route to or from the immortal lands.
The garden has long been admired and compared with the garden of Jishoji Temple, which was also designed after the garden of Saihoji and symbolizes the Buddhist East Pure Land.
The Oike Garden of the Kyoto Imperial Palace is distinguished from other gardens for its beautiful island (Nakajima)-dotted lake.
The garden, located to the east of the Kogosho or minor palace, is serene and dignified in harmony with the imposing edifices surrounding it.
Selected pebbles of uniform size mixed with white sand fill the lakeside along the path for viewers, giving it the air of a leisurely beach-line.
The islands, covered thickly with evergreen trees, are linked with two bridges, one of stone and the other of wood. The garden was built by the famed daimyo artist-tea master Kobori Enshu (1579 - 1647) around 1640. Great and popular landscape garden artist that he was, Kobori is said to have designed a dozen or so gardens in Kyoto.
Shishinden and Seiryoden are the only buildings modeled after the Shinden-zukuri style which represents the architecture of the Heian Period (794 - 1191). Other buildings in the palace are of the Shoin-zukuri style of the Kamakura period (1192 - 1336).
An inner garden called Nagare -no Niwa with streams running through it is seen. Though not a conventional landscape garden, a flat rectangular yard in front of of the Shishin-den (ceremony-hall) is equally as famous as the other two gardens of the old Imperial Palace.
White sand is all that makes up the yard. Sharply cut into a rectangular shape, the white enclosure is accentuated only by two trees standing in front of the Shishinden. It strikes visitors with solemnity and serenity all the more for its plainness.
The garden of Ninnaji Temple in Omuro, western Kyoto, is a typical example of gardens of the early part of the Edo Period (17th and 18th centuries). It still shows traditional trends of landscape gardening by arranging a horai island in the pond while the long narrow pond indicates a new fashion in landscape gardening of this period.
A large pond was either dug or a natural pond was used in gardens of the ancient Heian period (8th-12th centuries). It was large enough to represent the ocean and to have a few islands symbolizing the imaginary Taoist immortal land called horai which noble people in those days longed for. They also played music in boats on the pond.
The pond, however, gradually became smaller and narrower, down through the periods until it came to represent a river, not the ocean any more, in the Edo period. It was too narrow to have room for any horai island in it.
In the pond before the shinden hall is a beautiful horai island. This Chinese-origin Taoist belief in the immortal land has been dominant in landscape gardening since ancient days. But no horai gardens were built after the middle of the Edo period, partly because the idea horai went out of fashion ,and partly because the pond had no space for islands. The horai island in this garden is said to be t he last one built in the Edo period.
The Tsukiyama, a steep artificial hill, which came into vogue in the late Momoyama through early Edo period, is also a feature of this garden. This, along with that of Chishaku-in Temple, is listed among the best tsukiyama gardens, many masterpiece of which were created during the period.
Around the foot of the tsukiyama hill and the edge of the pond many medium sized rocks and small squat shrubs are arranged.
They are not like the imposing, powerful-looking angular rocks seen in the Kamakura and Muromachi period gardens of the gorgeous shrubs in the Momoyama period gardens. A waterfall, indispensable to a tsukiyama garden, flows into the pond from among the foliage of the tsukiyama. This garden should be viewed from the Shinden building, although it is also so designed that people can stroll around it.
Ninnaji Temple was built in the fourth year of Ninna, 888 A.D., by Emperor Uda, who headed the temple, and a living quarter for the Emperor was built there. It was called Omuro, or literally a room or a house for a dignitary, which gave the name to this area today. The main building, Shinden, which was rebuilt for the third time in the 1910s, does not fail to add a dignified, but elegant and bright impression to this garden. The garden was laid out in 1690.
The garden of Daigoji Temple's Sanbo-in is in every sense the best representative of the extravagant and gorgeous Momoyama-period (1574 - 1602) gardens - extravagant in the use of water, rocks and shrubs.
The picturesque garden , the Shinden-zukuri structure of the Heian period (794 - 1191) and Shoin-zukuri structure of the Kamakura period (1192 - 1331).
From the room, the Omoteshoin, a large pond can be seen in the center of the garden.
Groups of imposing rocks in various shapes and sizes, erected beside the pond or placed here and there in some part of the garden, and manicured shrubs give an impression of sumptuousness and grandeur. This impression, more or less, is true of all art and architecture of the Momoyama period.
Kame-jima (tortoise islet) and Tsuru-jima (crane islet) represent Buddhist paradise. The bridges may be symbolic as the passage way to the ideal place, for which people in those ancient days longed.
The sound of the water as it drops and runs into the pond is echoed among the elaborately arranged rocks and shrubs and is heard best in the Shoin room.
This garden also employs the technique of karesansui (dry landscape) which was most prevalent in the Muromachi period (1337 - 1573). While gravel around the buildings represents streams running under the floors. Gardens of the Heian period had real water running under the floors.
The Sambo-in garden, whose construction started by the then ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598, was completed after his death. It is the fruit of all the gardening techniques known in that period.
二条城 (二ﾉ 丸御殿) Power and Strength Through Rocks
The garden of Ninomaru Goten of Nijo Castle, completed in 1620s is another example of the gardens of the preceding Momoyama period (1574 - 1602) and a typical gorgeous daimyo garden. (The garden of Daigoji's Sambo-in, is said to be the best of the gardens of the Momoyama period).
This garden, characterized by magnificence and a strong grouping of rocks, shows a new trend in landscape gardening reflecting the new culture emerging in the new Edo period, as well as traditional gardening techniques seen in preceding pr periods in the arrangement of rocks.
The traditional technique employed in the arrangement of rocks along the edge of the pond is called sanzon iwagumi. This technique came to be used more frequently in and after the Muromachi period (1337-1573). The pattern is that rocks always are laid in trios, with the center one the highest and the largest. Sometime s one of the trio rocks is placed a little away from the other two to give some variation to the rock arrangement.
The sanzon represents Shakamuni and two Bosatsu or Buddhist saints Boddhisattva.
A favorite technique of a foremost gardener, Kentei, this pattern is also feature d at the garden of Nanzenji's Konchi-in which Kentei landscaped. This garden at Nijo Castle was also built by Kentei under the supervision of daimyo Kobori Enshu.
All the rocks, angular and powerful-looking are raised high to make them look more impressive and stronger than they really are, and to exaggerate the power and strength of the rocks. The rocks here are "standing on tiptoe," not buried deep, as in preceding periods. In the early days it was considered more artistic to show only part of the rocks and thus to "kill" the strength and power of the rocks. In other words the new mode was to make a small stone look like a huge rock.
This garden, in effect, attempts to overwhelm viewers with these rocks - to display the power of the host.
Nijo Castle was built in the 1620s for Ieyasu the first Shogun of the 260-year long Tokugawa Shogunate. He stayed in the castle while in Kyoto.
The garden, although a stroll garden, is designed to be viewed best from inside the emperor's or shogun's houses, whose floors are elevated. This is one of the reasons why the rocks are raised high (so that they are not obscured when viewed from an elevated floor).
This is an early example in which toro or stone lantern is used in an ordinary garden, although stone lanterns were already popular in teahouse gardens. Toro came into fashion in the Momoyama period along with the tea cult.
The pond, lavish with water, has three islets representing the traditional Taoist immortal land. Some gardens have only one horai island, a two tsuru (crane) and kame (tortoise) islands, or more than three as seen in the garden of Rokuonji but a garden with three islands is more authentic.
Stones have always played a very important role in most Japanese gardens, particularly those made in and after the Muromachi period (1337-1573), when the karesansui (dry landscape) came into fashion and reached its peak of development.
The ultimate in karesnsui gardens is the garden of the Buddhist Rinzei sect's Ryoanji Temple.
The flat oblong garden is bare of trees or pond. 15 selected stones are placed in an expanse of neatly raked white sand. The 15 stones of different sizes are laid out in groups of 5,2,3,2 and 3 from east to west. This arrangement is technically called the seven-five-three style.
The stones appear as if rising against the rapids that run from the east. A popular but superficial interpretation is that the stones depict parent tigers fording a stream with their cubs, which has given the name "tora-no-ko watashi" to this arrangement.
All karesansui gardens after the Muromachi period trace their origin to this rock garden, although an early type of the karesansui style is to be seen in the famed moss garden of Saihoji Temple of the 14th century, and even in some gardens prior to this.
The karesansui garden came into vogue during the Muromachi period, along with the development of Zen, Noh drama, and flower arrangement as well as the beginning of the tea cult. This gardening technique represents hills, islands, waterfalls and water with various arrangements using only stones and sands, moss and shrubs, instead of using real water or hills. The other natural (or conventional) type of garden that has ponds and hills is called chisen (pond) garden.
In the Ryoanji garden, the stones and sand may be interpreted as islands dot- ting the vast expanse of ocean by some; to others they may appear as mountain peaks soaring above a sea of clouds, and may well be significant of his own inner world to one, or the universe to the other. People are free to view the garden as a picture framed by the somber oil stained earthen wall at the rear, or forget about the frame and visualize the boundless of Zen spirit. No other gardens evoke such free exercise of the mind on the part of the viewer as this rock garden.
The garden is believed to have been built around 1499 when the temple was built by the dimyo Masamoto Hosokawa, but who designed the garden is not known. It has long been said that Soami, a famed artist of that period, was the designer.
妙心寺 Myoshinji/Garden Like a Landscape Painting
The karesansui (dry landscape) gardens of Myoshinji Temple's Taizo-in, Hanazono, built in the late Muromachi period (1337-1573), is known as a garden laid out by a foremost Japanese painter. It is famous for it pictorial flavor and in its superb composition of stones reminds the viewer of the designer-painter's landscape paintings. This garden, located to the west of the hojo building, is said to have been laid out by Kano Motonobu (1476-1559), who firmly established the Kano school his father Masanobu started, as shogun-sponsored painter, by employing the traditional elegant Yamato-e technique in the then prevalent Zen ink drawings. The Zen temple itself was built in 1404 by Daimyo Hatano Izumono-kami.
(The garden of Tofukuji Temple's Funda-in is known as the other karesansui garden in Kyoto that was laid out by another foremost monochrome landscape artist, Sesshu, of the same period).
Several large rocks gathered in the center of the "dry pond" represent the horai island, the mythical immortal land of Chinese Taoist origin. In front of it are two groups of stones symbolizing the crane and tortoise island, the Japanese version of the same idea of horai as in other horai gardens.
A dry waterfall composed of several rocks "tumbles down into the pond" at the right back of the horai island. A single slab stone bridge spans the "streams" of the waterfall, it being the typical pattern in a Zen garden to place a stone bridge before the waterfall, dry or real, ever since the first example in the garden of Tenryuji.
This and two other slab stone bridges inter-relating the rocky islets in the pond play an important role in uniting the numerous stones and rocks arranged here and there in harmony in this not so large garden, rather than just following the traditional pattern and thus making this garden one of the several finest karesansui gardens in Kyoto.
A mizuwake-ishi, meaning a stone dividing the water into two, placed alone in the "water" of the white sand, accentuates the garden, too, as well as these stone bridges.
The garden is viewed down from the veranda of the hojo building. The luxuriant foliage in the background serves as a thick backdrop to seclude this garden from the secular world outside. The garden then appears like a piece of real landscape painting by Kano Motonobu, the designer of this garden.
Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa believed to be constructed in the early 17th century possesses the grandest garden of all spreading around its 6,000 pond.
The triangular pond is studded with floating islets. Small projections and mooring places of boats jut out from the embankment.
Besides being the grandest the garden incorporates all the features of a Japanese garden. These features are roughly divided into four types - shuyu (garden designed for pleasure ride in boats), kaiyu (stroll garden), shoin (garden viewed from shoin building) and soan (villa type).
There is a sophisticated complex of ponds, streams and artificial hills in this garden and one will experience a never ending thrill at what is actually the acme of man's creativeness.
One of the best months to visit the villa is probably May for in that month the blossoming azaleas add a vivid color to the somewhat somber green of the garden. It can be said that the beauty of the garden lies in the marvelous combination of building and artificial landscape. The buildings including four shoin buildings and three tea houses are arranged in an asymmetrical manner.
Here an explanation on these buildings is in order since they are considered a "sublimation" of classical Japanese architecture. The structures have both the flavor of the Muromachi period (1337 - 1573) whose culture was centered more or less on warriors and of the Momoyama period (1574 - 1602) in which the commoners influence was more conspicuous.
A harmonious blend of the two distinctively different cultural patterns is seen in the building of this villa.
The origin of Katura Rikyu is not very clear but it is generally believed that it was constructed in the early 17th century for Toshihito, younger brother of Empress Goyozei.
The construction was initiated, it is believed in 1620 and took about four years to complete.
The prince was fond of tea ceremony, painting and music and other refined arts but architecture and landscape gardening were the two subjects he studied most assiduously.
Opinion is divided as to who designed the Katsura Rikyu - some say a wealthy merchant in Fushimi in the southern part of Kyoto built it at his own expense and dedicated it to the prince while others say the prince and his vassals did. But the latter theory is generally accepted as trustworthy in view of the villa's outstanding architectural value and exquisitely refined taste shown in the garden.
東福寺 ふもんいん Tofukuji's Fumonin - Modernity in Sand Patterns
The garden of Tofukuji Temple's Fumonin , laid out in the early Edo period (17th century), presents an example of the coexistence (or to some people contraction) of a simple Zen style garden, and shrubs - a full tsukiyama garden.
In front of the Fumonin building is a wide expanse of sand with a simple but attractive pattern neatly laid out in checkers.
The sand pattern is re-raked in various designs from time to time by interweaving the raked sand bands and un-raked plain ones.
It is this sand pattern that helps to keep this garden from being reduced to a mere relic of the past. Viewers of this garden may feel something like modernness in the sand garden. This sense of modernness is more or less true of some other Zen style sand or rock gardens.
In the rear of the sand is a rising tsukiyama (artificial hill) with a profusion of elaborate manicured shrubs, giving the effect of a high mountain. Trees in the background make a foliage backdrop.
As is the case in tsukiyama gardens, this garden has a small, narrow pond at the foot of the artificial hill. The pond with rocks showing in the water is accentuated by a two-slab yatsuhashi bridge and another single -slab stone bridge.
A stone passage leads to the kaidando (Founder's Hall) through the garden from the main gate, dividing the garden from the main gate, dividing the garden intothe flat sand part and the hill part. The passage was added when the garden was restored by M. Shigemori in 1939, but it does not seem to be a wise addition. The garden constitutes the east garden of Fumonin and at the same time the south garden of the Kaizando. In the right hand corner, when viewed from the Fumonin, and in the front when vied from the Kaizando, two large angular rocks stand to form the popular tsurukame islands, a Japanese version of the Chinese Taoist immortal land.
Tofukuji Temple, founded in 1236 by Kampaku Kujo Nichiie, has four other popular Zen-style gardens around the hojo building, of which the south garden is the main garden.
The "Moss Garden" is to Saihoji Temple, what the Rock Garden is to Ryoanji Temple. It is one of the few best and oldest Japanese gardens preserved o this day.
An expanse of green moss greets the visitor at the gateway to the garden leading him into a different and secluded world of fantasia of moss and sunbeams that reach the ground through the thick foliage.
This is a "stroll garden." Visitors can walk around the slightly undulation garden enjoying the luxuriant growth of moss in a delicate variety of green - deep or light, somber or bright.
The large pond, which is said to from the Chinese character for Kokoro, meaning heart, in the center of the garden is dotted with small moss-covered islets of rocks called Horai (imagined Buddhist paradise), Tsuru and Kame (crane and tortoise.) It is said that a two -storied shari-den or reliquary hall used to stand beside the pond as well as a hall on the Horai islet and 12 other buildings to make the garden symbolize Saiho-Jodo (Buddhist West Pure Land), when the garden was built by the great Zen priest Muso Kokushi around 1339.
The temple was originally opened by Priest Gyoki some years before 1200.
Ten rocks, arranged in the pond between the Horai islet and the edge of the pond which is covered by thick moss, are significant of boats anchoring overnight on its way to or home from the Buddhist paradise. The rocks are called Yodomari-ishi. Similar ones are seen in the pond of the Kinkakuji and Daikakuji. A Buddhist concept has always had more or less influence on Japanese gardening.
This moss garden is also well-known as being the oldest example of karesansui (dry landscape) gardens. Groups of moss overgrown rocks in the upper part of the garden represent a water-fall in a mountain. It is said that to have set the example for all later karesansui gardens the most famous of them all being the Rock Garden of Ryoanji Temple.
It is noted that these rocks at Saihoji are not linked to Zen Buddhism, as they are in other rock gardens, but merely meant to present natural scenery in miniature.
The moss is host here. It creates another world, unpolluted, secluded from this secular world, for visitors to this garden.
詩仙堂 しせんどう Shisendo - Personal Expression of Warrior-Poet
Visitors to Shisendo in Ichijoji on the northeastern outskirts of Kyoto will be surprised, after going down a cold somber stone path leading from the rustic gate to the shin house to find a bright garden with an expanse of white sand and gently undulating azalea shrubs to the south of the house.
This surprisingly sharp contrast between the somberness and coldness of the external appearance of the building and the brightness and the warmth of the garden inside Shisendo may reflect the mental state of Ishikawa Jozan, prominent warrior and poet who lived there in seclusion and laid out the garden in 1636 at the beginning of the Edo period.
While sand with fine parallel lines raked on it spreads out before the simple, rustic shoin house. Round tailored shrubs of azalea surrounding the white sand remind viewers of Zen-style ink drawings of a typical Chinese scenery, giving these garden its fame as a fine example of kara-yo (Chinese style) garden.
Jozan's life in retirement here was free from any restraint of social rules. He designed this garden as his personal property following his own will and tastes, free from any traditional rules of gardening. What visitors observe here is thus the free expression of a resident who lived here 300 years ago. Gardens had long been properties of the ruling powers of society such as temples, shrines, imperial palaces and nobles.
Here is no austere atmosphere, frigidity or indifference usually seen in Zen gardens, despite the white sand. Nor is there any sense of cramped space as in tea house gardens.
Here Jozan, sitting in the shoin room or the veranda, enjoyed respite from long hours of reading or writing Chinese poems. Here visitors feel the garden is familiar and accessible to them not like the dignified gardens of temples and imperial palaces.
Adding to the placidity and quietude of this garden is a sound, coming from among the foliage in the rear, or a bamboo stick striking a stone at regular intervals. The device is so designed that a bamboo pipe, which is hinged about its middle, catches water from a streamlet, and when it is filled dips down with the weight of water, emptying the pipe and then flings back onto a stone. The device called sozu or shishiodoshi, was originally to scare away wild boar and deer which used to frequent the neighborhood.
The use of the natural hillside in the background is so effective that the maple trees in the rear constitute a beautiful autumn-colored backdrop in November leaving only the southwestern part (right front view from the shoin room) open to a perspective of the ancient capital.
A sasanqua tree, a kind of Japanese camellia, hundreds of years old, which will be in full bloom in November to December, and a Korean pine tree also add color to this garden.
The gardens of Tenryuji Temple constitute an open, bright world, while the moss garden of Saihoji Temple is a closed, somber world. Both were designed by the great Zen priest Muso Kokushi in 1339.
The Tenryuji garden, the oldest Zen-style garden, looks more spacious than it re ally is, because of the stretch of white sand between the large Dai-hojo ( abbot's living quarter) and the pond called Sogen-chi.
The focus of this garden is the two-tiered dry waterfall composed of imposing rocks, seen in the luxzurious foliage in the center background of the opposite brink of the pond from the veranda of the Daihojo.
Also giving the garden its austere and crisp atmosphere of Zen Buddhism are small islets intended as Horai (Buddhist paradise) in front of the dry water fall and several other islets of angular rocks rising straight out of the water, which sometimes looks as if they were floating on the surface.
A flat three-stone bridge, which meets at right angles with the waterfall, was the first of its kind to be built in a Zen oriented landscape garden. Such stone bridges before a dry waterfall later came into vogue in Zen-style rock gardens.
Among the dry waterfall rock, there is what is called a carp rock, which is said to embody the designer's favorite idea that a carp ascends the waterfall atopthe mountain of Kameyama in the rock, to become a dragon, a mythical creature of Chinese origin.
Some say the waterfall used to have real water falling into the pond and it may be true. It is, however, more reasonable to think that the waterfall was made dr y from the beginning because the sounds of the Oi River running in Arashiyama, beyond the Kameyama Hills, could be heard in the garden in those days, according to existing records.
The grandeur of the scale of this garden is also due to the hills of Kameyama in the background. The garden was built on the premises of the former Kameyama Palace and the hill was part of the palace. The grandeur further impresses the viewer, where he views the hills of Arashiyama lying beyond Kameyama as part of the garden. The green grass and white sand which frame the edge of the pond remind viewers of softly outlined, colorful Yamatoe paintings while the groups of angular rocks as well as the dry waterfall remind one of Chinese Sung-influenced monochrome landscapes, with the two painting styles blended in harmony.
The temple belonging to the Rinzai (Zen) sect was established by the then ruler Ashikaga Takauji to the memory of Emperor Godaigo who had been exiled in Yoshino, Nara.
Lake Osawa, expanding broadly and peacefully in the eastern premises of Daikakuji Temple, Saga, is the remains of an ancient gardern that remind visitors of the magnificent gardens that existed 1,000 years ago. Around 834 A.D., in the early part of the Heian period, Emperor Saga built his palace, Saga-in, around Lake Osawa Pond, which was then one of the three large reservoirs in the Saga area.
A Shinden-style main house, was built on the northern side of the lake, the Izumi-dono house on the west and the Tsuri-dono on the east, as was the typical pattern in building any mansion of the nobles in those days.
Those nobles strolled around the embankment of the lake, to enjoy the changing view of Asaharayama hills casting this shadow on the water, and the fine perspective of the rolling Ogura and Arashiyama hills in the west and Sagano plains stretching to the south. On such occasions as cherry flower viewing in spring and full moon viewing in autumn, they played court music and performed dances on garly bedecked boats.
The palace, was converted into a temple, Daikakuji, in 876 A.D., 34 years after Emperor Saga died.
The Japanese "niwa" is distinguished from Western gardens where people grow flowers or play. A Japanese garden has been a place where people try to express an idea and create another ideal world - immortal in the early period, and later, a paradise beyond this world.
A lake and an islet plus water were the sole components of the garden, at least till the karesansui dry landscape garden was developed in the 14th century. To represent people's longing for the immortal land Japan's first form of garden - a man-made hill and a bridge - appeared around 612 A.D. in Nara. The shima (island) was the equivalent to a garden in those days.
This belief in the immortal land became confused toward the late Heian period (around 10th century) with the Buddhist belief in Gokuraku jodo, paradise, after death.
Water has been indispensable to the Japanese garden, as people believe it has magic to purify everything in this world. (Even karesansui gardens have water represented by sand or moss.)
And the garden of the Saga-in Palace of today's Daikakuji Temple was no exception. The garden itself was symbolic of the imaginary ideal land. Some 100 meter north of the lake is a group of moss-covered rocks, which are said to be part of the waterfall called "Nakoso no Taki" which means "waterfall where man should not intrude." To the people in those days, the garden was divine and the object of worship. The lotus and water lily growing lake is also dotted with two islets called Tenjin-jima and Kiku-jima.
The gardens of Shinsen-en located south of Nijo Castle, and Kikou-tei near Kawara-machi-shichijo are also remains of gardens of over 1,000 years ago.
大仙院 Daisen-in - Journey Through Rapids to Calm Sea
The significance of the karesansui dry landscape garden is in its symbolism.
It is this suggestion of symbolism of nature, not the abstract composition of rocks, that gives the karesansui garden its artistic (and philosophical)value.
The garden of Ryoanji Temple, well-known as one example of the ultimate in karesansui gardens, is interesting in that the white sand and the 15 rocks could represent the ocean dotted with islands, or rapids dashing against rocks, or mountain peaks rising above a sea of clouds, so symbolic of man's inner world.
Here at Daisen-in of Daitokuji Temple, more than 20 rocks of various sizes, shapes and textures are packed in a small garden of less than 100 , to depict a landscape of deep mountains, a waterfall and a river.
The "water" (represented by the white sand) starts from deep in the mountains in the far distance (represented by camellia shrubs in the rear), making a waterfall in the deep valley to form rapids that wind and dash against the rocks.
Two gigantic crags tower before the camellia shrubs, representing cliffs or mountains in the foreground.
Soon after passing a slab stone bridge the rapids become deep water. It then emerges suddenly as a wide, serene river, after passing under a corridor jutting out over the garden from the Hojo hall, dividing the garden into two. The corridor is used as an excellent artistic technique of abbreviation to depict the water all the way from its start to its eventual journey to the ocean.
Some of the rocks are placed so close to the low veranda of the Hojo hall that viewers of the garden can almost seem to hear the sound of waves washing the beach or see the sprays of the rapids.
Viewers are not just watching an artificial landscape any more; they are right among nature itself.
After safely traversing the stormy rapids and emerging into the open, tranquil sea they see a fine large rock in the shape of a boat, called a funa-ishi. It is interpreted as ship headed for the ocean with a full load of treasures, or as a ship headed for a treasure island with treasure yet to be loaded.
This funa-ishi probably is known as the best of many funa-ishi rocks in Japanese gardens because of its fine shape.
Here rocks play the role of the hero - rocks that symbolize the austere, strong will of the revelation seeking priest to resist and reject things worldly and human.
The garden was built about 1509 in the latter part of the Muromachi period (1337 - 1573)
The garden of Nanzenji's Konchi-in Temple, designed by the foremost tea master artist Kobori Enshu, foremost landscape gardener of the early Edo period, in the early 17th century is one of the few gorgeous karesansui dry landscape gardens of the early Edo period.
The serenity and austerity of a Zen garden are conveyed by the oblong expanse of white sand, some 40 meters by 14 meters, to viewers seated on the veranda of the Momoyama style hojo, abbot's hall.
But here the quiet Zen atmosphere that can be sensed at Ryoanji's Rock Garden is over powered by the baroque lavishness of the groups of angular rocks and luxuriant growth of evergreen shrubs in the back, so typical of the preceding Momoyama period (1574 - 1602).
Known as a tsuru-kame Crane and tortoise) garden, the Konchi-in garden has two symmetric islands of rocks with old pine trees. One appearing like a crawling tortoise on the left side of the garden is Kame-jima (Tortoise Island), and the rocks on the right side represent Tsuru-jima (crane-Island).
In the center back of the garden are groups of angular rocks and gravel representing Chines-origin Taoist Elysium islets beyond the sea, which is represented by the white sand.
The belief in the Taoist immortal land prevailed among nobles until the mid-Edo period and symbolized in their gardens.
The use of a stone lantern (toro) among the rocks is a trend seen in tea gardens which came into fashion in the preceding period.
A large flat rock in front of the shrubs and rocks is said to be the stone that worships the gongen-zukuri style Toshogu Shrine in the back of the garden. The shrine was built to the memory of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1596.
Kochi-in built originally in Takagamine, northern Kyoto, in 1394, was moved to the present site in 1596. A great priest, Suden, who acted as adviser to Ieyasu and called the Prime Minister in Black Robes, had Enshu design the garden and Kentei complete in 1632. Kentei was the foremost landscape gardener of the period. He designed Daigo-ji's Sambo-in garden.
光悦寺 Koetsuji - Tea Garden where Naturalness Reigns
Th tea garden, or garden attached to a tea house, usually means the passage leading to the tea house where they are prepared spiritually to attend to a tea ceremony, but not the garden to be viewed from shoin or hojo rooms.
The passage called roji presents a "moving landscape similar to stroll gardens. The space of a tea garden, however, is very much limited, unlike that of spacious stroll gardens.
Tea cult masters in the past worked out many artificial devices to give variety and a sense of spaciousness to this limited space such as kuguri (wooden screen with a small door through which guests are let to the tea house), stepping stone s and toro stone lanterns.
Their ideal was to make the garden full of artificiality extremely natural, more natural than nature itself. While spiritually controlling nature, it was their aim to make themselves look as if they were controlled by nature in the tea grden. The tea masters seeking after the world of wabi, the goal of the tea cult, preferred imperfectness to perfectness, want to fullness, simplicity to gorgeousness, irregularity to regularity.
The garden of Koetsuji temple at the foot of the Takagamine hills, north of Kyoto, presents these features of the tea garden.
This is where one of the representative tea master-artists of the early Edo period, Honami Koetsu (1558 - 1637), lived in retirement. Koetsu added nothing artificial to this garden except for one thing: a bamboo fence, extending freely toward the gentle ridge of the Takagamine hills, as if it were blending into the hills. The bamboo fence which Koetsu himself worked out, is called for its unique design, Koetsu-gaki fence.
This artificial Koetsu-gaki here becomes part of nature and seems even more natural than the natural objects in the garden, achieving the goal of the tea cult mentioned above.
Koetsu seemed to live here among nature as if he were a subject of nature, while in fact he was in spiritual control.
There is nothing to see in this garden from the point of conventional landscape gardens such as Ryoanji's rock garden; but this is a garden, too; with its bamboo fence and the gentle ridge of the Takagamine bills blending together. Koetsu had looked long for this place where he could just watch and live.
Koetsu, famous for his Makie lacquer art, produced many masterpieces with designs of "deformation," which were new at the beginning of Edo period still under influence of the preceding Momoyama period.
The beauty and the essence of Nanzenji Temple's garden lie in the empty blank of immaculate white sand that expands to the west (right)as if boundless, while a group of rocks and shrubs arranged to the east accentuates this flat, rectangular Zen garden. The garden, made in the early Edo Period is a place for the religious and philosophy minded to mediate in, although the austere atmosphere of the rock gardens of Muromachi period seen at Ryoanji's Rock Garden is weakened some what by shrubs
. Three large, powerful looking rocks and three other smaller rocks are laid out in the back from east to west in order of their size, interspersed with two pine trees and evergreen shrubs. This may be interpreted as an artistic expression of the flow of power of the outer world, or the power of nature. (A popular, but superficial, description of these rocks is that parent tigers are wading the stream represented by the white sand, with their cubs, identical to the interpretation given to the rocks at Ryoanji).
The empty space, on the contrary, may be interpreted as man's inner world, or rather the state of "emptiness" of mind people have strived to achieve; in other words, enlightenment.
It may be more reasonable, however, to regard the empty space as just empty or free space where a viewer is free to draw any pictures he likes. Spectators seated on the veranda of the hojo abbot's hall may enjoy filling the space with their own fanciful images, or finding a picture of their own inner world through leng thy meditations.
The empty stretch of the white sand expanding from the center to the west contri butes a great deal to the crisp beauty of this garden just as blank spaces in Ja panese paitings do. It was a feature of gardens arranging rocka and shrubs in a corner of the garden.
Viewers can look at the garden as a framed Zen ink drawing and also as shakkei b orrowing of scenery garden, when the hill of Daiorichi-san in the back is seen a s part of the garden. Or they are free to forget about the white earthen walls o n the west and see the blank white sands stretching without end in their mind's eye.
The hojo building, which is a mixture in style of the elegant shinden-zukuri of the Heian period and the magnificent baroque style of the Momoyama period, was originally the Seiryo-den hall at the Imperial Palace, donated by the then ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi around 1580, and moved here some time after Nanzenji Temple w as founded in 1601.
The garden is said to have been designed by the famed daimyo-artist Kobori Enshu around the same period when the karesansui dry landscape, Turu-Kame crane -tortoise Garden of Konchi-in was laid out by Enshu. The present site was origin ally part of Emperor Kameyama's detached palace since 1280.
大徳寺 - Daitokuji - Expanse of Immaculate White Ssnd
The karesansui dry landscape garden south of the hojo at Daitokuji Hondo head temple is another fine garden of immaculate white sand.
In the southeast corner (left rear when seen from the hojo of the garden) there is a dry waterfall represented by two crags, suggesting profuse water roaring and tumbling down the cataract.
Several rocks, studded low on the expanse of white sand from the foot of the waterfall toward the Momoyama style karamon gate, denote rocks standing amid the violent torrents, and rapids spraying against the rocks.
Shrubs of camellia and sasanqua capping the two waterfall crags represent mountains in the far distance.
Here in this garden, with a landscape technique typical of the early part of the Edo period, is depicted the flow of the power of rocks, or power of nature, starting from the left and waving to the right.
What makes this garden peaceful and quiet, however, is not the composition of rocks but the free expanse of white sand before the hojo. In other words, what makes this garden fines is the fact what the rocks are placed so unobtrusively t hey do not disturb the placidness of the free expanse of white sand. This is the garden where priests sought their inner world after attaining enlightenment and peace of mind. The white sand makes the garden seem more spacious than it really is.
The whiteness of the sand, metallic and austere, constitutes another world distinct from this world of man and nature. The hojo is also bordered on the east side by a narrow oblong karesansui garden and two-tiered camellia hedges.
This garden also represents a stream or a rapid current in the valley starting from a waterfall in the corner, with low rocks and low azalea shrubs arranged in twos and threes on wave-raked white sand.
Mt. Hiei, Kyoto's highest mountain (880m), forms a backdrop making this another garden where technique of shakkei borrowed scenery has been well used (as was in the garden of Entsuji)
Similar two-tiered hedges are also seen at the garden of Koho-an in the precinct s of the Daitokuji with its more than 20 temples, which daimyo-artist Kobori Enshu made and where he lived. And this garden with its two-tiered hedges is al so believed to have been designed by Enshu.
The south garden is said to have been laid in 1636 when the hojo was built by t he temple's abbot.
What first surprises visitors to this garden of the late 15th century Jishoji Temple is the abstract compositions of white sand - an expanse of sand piled up some 30 cm high, and a mound shaped like an ice-cream corn with its top cut off - between the Ginkaku (Silver Pavilion) and Togudo, both structures designated as national treasures.
So bold and drastic in composition in comparison to the other traditional structures are the expanse of white sand named Ginshadon or Silver Sea and the sand cone dubbed Kogetsudai or Moon-Viewing Terrace that these are said to have been added later, some time in the 17th century.
The white sand in all Zen gardens, along with rocks, represents emptiness in the Zen world. It denotes seclusion and transcendence from this world. Sand collapses more easily than rocks; it is emptier and more shapeless. The emptiness of the sand here, however, is designed to be filled with the light of the moon as it rises above the Higashiyama hills. The sand reflecting the silver moonlight light s up the whole garden.
The classic value of this garden, however, is not in the sand, but in the landscape layout copied after the Moss garden of Saihoji Temple of the preceding Kamakura period.
Yoshimasa, the eighth Shogun of the declining Ashikaga Shogunate, constructed Higashiyama Villa after his own design. This was converted to the present Jishoji Temple after his death, at the foot of the Higashiyama hills in 1482-1490, involving many excellent landscape gardeners such as Zoami and Matashiro.
This garden symbolizes the Buddhist Toho Kannon Jodo (East Kannon Pure Land), while its models, the Moss Garden of Saihoji Temple and the garden of Rokuonji Temple made by Yoshimasa's grandfather Yoshimitsu, represent the Buddhist Saiho Amida Jodo (West Amitabah Pure Land).
There is a rock island with a pine tree named Kaku-tsuru Jima representing the Pure Land in the pond in front of the original Shoin-zukuri style Togudo devotion al hall. A single slab stone bridge and another of two flat stones span the Kinkyo-ichi pond linking the island to this world. White lotus used to grow in the pond symbolizing it as a Buddhist paradise. A waterfall in the hillside make a pool called Sengetsuen, literally "spring that washes the moon," the water of which runs into the pond.
There is another pond with an island of similar design in front of the somber two-story Ginkaku (silver Pavilion), which was built patterned after Yoshimasa's grandfather's lavish three-story Kinkaku.
Isolated from the civil war torn and devastated capital, it was where Yoshimasa and his literati coterie gathered to discuss the arts and culture. Here was the trade of a new culture that blended well the traditional arts of the aristocrats with the newly arising culture of the warriors and Chinese culture, developing the tea cult, flower arrangement, ink drawing paintings, Shoin-zukuri architectural style and other forms of art.
まんしゅういん Manshuin - Where House and Garden Blend
Most karesansui dry landscape gardens were gardens attached to the hojo abbot's chamber of a Zen temple, because of the philosophical and religious nature and effect the karesansui has.
The gardens of Ryoanji Temple, Daisenin Temple, Nanzenji Temple and Daitokuji Honbo Temple are gardens of this category. The karesansui garden of the Buddhist Tendai sect's Manshuin Temple in Shugakuin in the northeastern outskirts of Kyoto, however, is not a garden attached to the Shoin house. It therefore aims more at aesthetic and artistic values to be enjoyed in daily life rather than the philosophical and religious values required at Zen temples.
The garden and the Shoin houses - Omote (front) shoin and the Oku (rear) shoin - were built in 1656, by prince-turned-priest Yoshihisa, brother of Prince Hachijonomiya Yoshitada, who worked on the second phase of the construction of Katsura Rikyu villa, the best example of Japanese traditional architecture. Thus features similar to those of Katsura Rikyu, in particular in the architecture of Shoin, are to be seen here too.
Though far smaller in area and not to be compared with Katsura Rikyu, the buildings are so well fused into the garden that they become part of the garden, and vice versa, increasing the elegant beauty of each other. The garden and the buildings are not to be appreciated separately here as at Katsura Rikyu.
A crag is erected imposingly straight in the front rear (southeast) of the garden to represent a waterfall, against a backdrop of foliage. As is also seen in the rock waterfalls of Tenryuji, a slab stone is laid at right angles to the waterfall crag, representing a bridge spanning a stream before the waterfall.
This combination of waterfall and bridge in this garden is praised as one of the few best examples, along with that of Tenryuuji.
The water represented by white sand flows down from the waterfall and is divided into two streams by a rock called mizuwake-ishi in the center, making a lake before the Shoin houses. The edges of the "water" are hemmed by a bridge or deep green velvet of moss, making a sharp contrast with the white sand. Toward the lower reaches of the "stream" there is a Kame-jima tortoise island and to its right a Turu-jima crane island, the Japanese mythical islands representing the Chine se Taoist belief in the immortal land. The tortoise island is made low like a tortoise crawling; the crane islands high with an old pine tree spreading its boughs and branches wide, so that viewers can easily tell the crane from the tortoise. This is a feature in many tsuru-kame garden of the Edo period.
It may be noted here that the verandah of the Shoin is partly made wider to be used for moon viewing, just as a specially wide bamboo terrace jutting out from the Shoin building at Katsura Rikyu was made for moon viewing.
The garden of Chishakuin Temple of the late 17th century is known for its superb, refined tsukiyama (artificial hill) with manicured shrubs and angular rocks rising high and close to the Shoin building, creating a feeling of high, deep mountains.
Tsukiyama is a landscape gardening technique of building artificial mountains in the garden of arranging rocks and shrubs on a natural hillside to make a high peak. This type of landscaping came into vogue in the Momoyama through early Edo period (1574-around 1600). Many masterpieces of tsukiyama gardens were built in the early to mid-Edo period, this garden of Chishakuin being one of the best examples.
Although some gardens before the Momoyama period also have artificial hills made when a pond was dug in the garden, they are not called tsukiyama.
It is typical for a waterfall tumbling down the steep rocks slope in the tsukiyama to have a stone bridge spanning it in the middle part. It is also a tradition al technique to place a stone bridge in front of the waterfall, as is seen in the Garden of 14th century Tenryuji Temple and of later gardens.
Where the waterfall falls into the oblong pond along the foot of the hill stands a rock of beautiful shape as if afloat. The rock under the waterfall is called mizu-wakeishi or stone that divides the water into two. The mizuwakeishi was laid just under the waterfall in gardens built before the Muromachi period (1337-15 73) but the rocks came to be placed a little apart from the waterfall in gardens made after the Momoyama period.
The oblong pond extends far under the floor of the Shoin building making it appear similar to such buildings of the Heian period as the Tsuri-dono and Izumi-don o. The natural three-slab stone bridge across the pond is also as well-known for its simple beauty as that of the Tenryuji garden.
The intricate configuration of shrubs and rocks is said to have been designed after the mountain landscape at Lu-shan in China. The Buddhist Chizan school temple was established at the present place in Higashiyama Shichijo in 1674 by Unsho, seventh abbot of the temple.
修学院 - Shugakuin - Man's Handwork Joins with Nature's
The garden of Shugakuin Rikyu Imperial Villa located in the foothills of Kyoto's highest mountain, Mt. Hiei, is the largest and grandest in scale and the best example in which the artificial beauty of the garden is presented so naturally i n its surrounding.
Built around 1659 in the early Edo period, by ex-Emperor Gomizuno, Shugakuin Rikyu is composed of three parts - the lower villa, the middle villa and the upper villa, which are interconnected by a path some four meters wide. The garden of Shugakuin Rikyu usually means that of the upper villa.
The garden here is aesthetically excellent, not because it is the largest in scale or because it commands such a spacious perspective, but because it presents the perspective to us so beautifully.
Visitors to this garden must ascend a considerably long way, up steps hedged by a mass of clipped shrubbery which shuts out the view from the outside, so that when they reach Rin-un-tei house atop the hill, some 150 meters above sea level , they are presented more effectively with a surprisingly fine view of the large Yokuryu-chi dragon-bathing lake below them, and a perspective of undulating hills stretching far away.
The view from the top extends endlessly from woods and paddy fields at the foot t o hills far away and the sky beyond them, making them all part of the garden. Shakkei is a popular technique of borrowing part of the outside scenery as a backdrop to the garden. But here the outside scenery is more than a mere backdrop; it is the garden itself.
This is an open world of nature, while the garden at Katsura Rikyu Imperial Villa was a closed world, whose artificial beauty existed separately from nature outside, like a scene in a framed painting.
The lake which embraces three islets in it was artificially made by damming a valley. The four tiers of stone wall embankments, which stand some 15 meters high at one point, are covered with tall three-tiered shrubs, making a beautiful scene of natural embankment called West Beach.
In this spacious Shugakuin Rikyu, not even a tree or shrubbery is left untouched - the edge of the water, the waterfall, everything has been made by the hand of man. It is done in such a clever way that here artificiality makes the surrounding nature more beautiful. The beauty of the garden lies in the cooperation of natural and artificial beauty.
The garden is designed as a stroll garden. It is now one of the best seasons to visit the garden to admire the autumn colored maple leaves.
清水寺のじょうじゅいん Jojuin of Kiyomizu
The garden of Jojuin of Kiyomizu Temple, though not large in itself, lies elegantly with a seeming sense of spaciousness, fused into the sorrounding Higashiyama hill.
This garden laid out in the late 17th century has long been admired as one of th e most "elegant and graceful" gardens as is commented in a history of landscape gardens published in the 18th century.
A stone lantern, called Kagero (day-fly or dragonfly)-toro from its shape, stands on Nakajima island in the pond. It appears as if standing alone in the hillside of Yuyadani that makes a fine backdrop to this garden beyond the low cut hedge.
This technique of shakkei or borrowing of scenery results in an effect of spaciousness. The idea of placing a stone lantern in the hillside is so unique that it is said that some talented artists such as Soami and Kobori Enshu must have designed and completed this garden.
Toro came into fashion as a garden ornament in the Momoyama period (1574-1602) when "tea gardens" became popular. From the early part through the mid Edo period (17th - 18th century) more than a dozen different types of toro such as the Yukimi-toro and Oribe-toro were in use.
Katsura Rikyu Detached Palace is a good example where stone lanterns have an important place in the garden. Ornaments should never play the main character role. Instead they should complement or accentuate the garden, just as spices give accent to a dish. Stone lanterns therefore can usually be just glimpsed under shrubs or through the foliage.
This garden is also known for two unique stone lanterns, a squat temari (ball)- toro and a sankaku (triangular)-toro.
On Nakajima island there is a rock shaped like a courtiers headgear, called eboshi-jima which also looks like a meditating priest. To the left of Nakajima, which is linked by a slightly arched wooden bridge and another stone bridge, there is an isolated single-rock island in the pond.
What makes this garden graceful are shrubs, trimmed into round or square shapes. A dry waterfall, composed of a group of fine rocks, can be seen beyond the simple wooden bridge over the pond.
A large magnificent stone wash basin by the veranda of the Shoin building that Toyotomi Hideyoshi loved to use also catches the eye of visitors to the garden. It is called Furisode or Kimono sleeve wash basin because of its shape.
This garden has been praised for its good location for full-moon viewing and is popularly called the garden of the moon.
しょうれんいん Shoren-in Temple - Commingling of Edo, Meiji Tastes
The garden of the Buddhist Tendai sect's Shoren-in Temple at Awataguchi, Higashi yama, used to be known as the garden of the Awataguchi Imperial Palace and today it still conveys a noble atmosphere of the past. The garden laid out around 1675 , the early part of the Edo period, still retains features of gardens of the Edo period on such points as the composition of rocks and a dry waterfall, despite several minor revisions and a drastic replanning in 1893 when the temple was destroyed by a fire. New tastes in gardening in the Meiji Era were added to many parts of the garden at that time, a lawn being one of those new additions.
The garden is laid to the east of the Shoin house, at the foot of Kachozan hills . It is designed as a stroll garden as well as a garden to be viewed from Shoin room. The main part of this garden is a three-tiered dry waterfall composed of several massive rocks in the right rear of the pond. It "tumbles" down to the no narrow pond, with its water edges embanked by rocks of various sizes. This narrow pond is a feature of the gardening of the early Edo period, as is the composition of the rock waterfall (cf. Omura Ninnaji Temple's garden).
A two-stone arch bridge spans the pond, close to the shoin house.
On the left edge of the pond is a small tsukiyama artificial hill studded with squat azalea shrub and rocks. The tsukiyama, which came into garden fashion in t he late Momoyama through the early Edo period, is covered with bright grass, the use of which became popular in the Meiji Era, while the slope in the right back of the pond is covered with moss which connotes darkness.
It may be noted that the bridge and rocks in the right half of the garden are much larger than the rocks and shrubs in the other part. This is clever because the garden looks more spacious in perspective than it really is when it is viewed from the Shoin room.
Accentuating this garden is a massive rock placed like a floating island, in the center of the pond. This garden with an area of some 330 also appears as a much larger villa when viewed from the top of the hill behind the pond through foliage which forms an autumn tinted backdrop to the garden.
On the tsukiyama is a tea house named Kobuntei, which is said to have once been a study for Empress Gosakuramachi (1763-1770) the last empress in history. In the rear of the tea house is a simple, quiet garden of moss with several pine and maple trees and shrubs of Kirishima Tsutsuji (kind of azalea).
The Meiji Rstoration of 1868 may be characterized by two apparently contradictor y trends: an attempt to revive the ancient days of the emperors of the Nara and Heian periods or ever earlier and to go back to the traditional way; and to introduce modern Western civilization to make up for the cultural gap caused by 30 0 years of isolation from the West.
And the gardens of the Meiji period were no exceptions in showing these trends. The superb garden of Murin-an Villa located near Nanzenji is just such a garden.
Laid out in 1895 by the villa owner Aritomo Yamagata, veteran states man of the Meiji Restoration, the 3,500 square-meter garden is carpeted by a gently undulating lawn. It is designed as a stroll garden and as a place for a garden party which was introduced as a Western custom. The use of lawn in the Japanese garden was already known in the Momoyama period (16th century), introduced by warriors who returned from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's expedition to subjugate Korea; but is did not win popularity in the Japanese gard3en, most being preferred to moss. Katsura and Shugakuin Rikyu Detached Palaces are two old gardens that use lawns as well as moss.
This garden, however, never fails to show its typical Japaneseness, or rather, i t is even more Japanese despite its lawn, as is seen particularly in the arrangement of rocks along the edge of the fresh, serene brooks winding down the garden from the east to the west. The brooks start from a three tiered angular rock waterfall in the eastern corner, which is also in typical Japanese tradition.
Large rocks to accentuate the slightly uphill garden are all buried deep in the lawn so that only the surface of the rocks show. Other rocks and shrubs along the brooks are not high, either, which helps the garden appear softer.
Higashiyama Hills in the background form a backdrop making the garden appear spacious and bright.
Jihei Ogawa, one of the foremost gardeners of the period, built this garden, probably the best garden made in the Meiji period as well as the best example of the landscape artist's works.
It is owned by Kyoto city today, and those who wish to see the garden should apply to Kytoshi Kankokyoku.
三千院 Sanzen-in - Emerald green World of Moss
Moss has played a great role in producing the unique, fantastic atmosphere of an other world, unpolluted and soothing and at the same time exciting and appealing to the sense of touch, as in the moss garden of Saihoji Temple.
Here in the garden Sanzen-in Temple on the northern outskirts of Kyoto is another beautiful, excellent moss garden where the moss creates a placid, enchanting air of another sphere quite apart from this secular world.
Visitors reach this garden after ascending a rustic passage lined with autumn co lored maple trees, through imposing rock walls like those of an ancient Japanese castle and finally down the dark corridor of the temple's main hall.
Then in front of the Amitabha hall, there opens, as if suddenly, a world of an overgrowth of moss, with the simple but superbly elegant Ojogokuraku-in (rebirth to paradise hall) standing in its center. Centuries old Japan cedar trees throw their dark shadow on the bright green moss carpet. The hall is known as a building made in the 12th century.
This is nothing artificial in this garden except for the overgrowth of deep moss which looks very natural but is well cared for. The garden is called the Emerald Luster Garden after the emerald green of the moss.
Here is expressed the Buddhist devotee's longing for the Pure Land after death. Here the moss purifies the air surrounding the Ojo-gokuraku-in hall, making it t he best place to meet Amitabha coming from the Pure Land. Those Buddhist followers who have sought Ojo-gokuraku (Nirvana or rebirth to paradise) since hundreds of years ago must have seen the light of the Pure Land in this moss garden, so p ervaded by a fantastic and even mystifying yet peaceful atmosphere.
Significantly enough the garden is open to the West which allows a perspective - the Buddhist paradise is believed to be in that direction; there is no fence or wall to shut up this garden. It can be compared to the closed moss garden of Saihoji, which with its somber air represents the Buddhist West Amitabha Pure Land.
Sanzen-in garden in this rural Ohara area is known as one of the best examples of the expression of the Buddhist Pure Land along with Uji's 1,000 year-old Byodo-in.
On the left side (seen from the Amitabha Hall) there is a small pond, with rocks arranged reservedly, a low bridge and Yamabuki (yellow roses) growing so naturally on the edge of the water they do not appear artificial any more.
Shakkei (borrowing of outside scenery as backdrop of the garden) has been popular technique in Japanese landscape gardening since as early as the 9th century. Many gardens of Kyoto are known for their excellent way of using the beautiful perspective of hills and peaks as backdrop.
Kameyama hills as a backdrop to the garden of Tenryuji, Mt. Hiei to Shodenji Garden, and Higashiyama Hills to Murin-an's Garden are some well-known examples of Shakkei.
The garden of Entsuji Temple, among many other gardens, is probably the best of the Shakkei gardens.
The apparently flat, but actually a slightly tiered, oblong garden, measuring about 1,300 square meters, to the east of the temple's Shoin building, it is carpeted with deep green velvet moss and dotted with many rocks in groups of twos and threes, some rising straight but mostly lying low. This karesansui dry landscape garden may represent a vast sea dotted with islands and breaking white caps, o r surfs lapping the sea shore. Although such a way of viewing gardens is not of significance, this interpretation, however, is substantiated by the fact that a devotional hall called Cho-on-do or wave-sound-hall used to stand to the south of the garden.
This is a place for visitors to savor a serene atmosphere, secluded from the noises of this world, and to enjoy the beauty of perspective from the quiet garden. Entsuji, located in Rakuhoku, near Midoroga-ike, was built originally as the villa of Emperor Gomizuno in the late 17th century by the Emperor himself, whose gardening ability is well known today for designing the Shugakuin Rikyu (Detached Palace.)
こほうあん Koho-an - Garden Enshu Built for Himself
Koho-an, one of the temples of Daitokuji in Murasakino, is well known as the place the great daimyo-artist Kobori Enshu designed for himself to live in. It was originally built in 1612 in the early Edo period, in the grounds of Daitokuji and later, around 1643, moved to the present site.
Such a great master was he in Ikebana, Chanoyu, and calligraphy, as well as in landscape gardening that people liked to attribute any garden to Enshu so long as it was made in the Edo period. But, in fact, there are not more than several gardens that Enshu actually worked on, including the dry-landscape garden of Nanzenji's Konchi-in, besides the gardens of this Koho-an.
The garden before the hojo abbot's hall is a Karesansui garden without any rocks or shrubs, only square-trimmed two-tiered hedges. Beyond the manicured hedge ca n be seen Funaoka-yama hill located close to the temple.
The flat garden is well-cared for so that no moss grows and the red earth of the garden is bare. A similar two-tiered hedge is also seen in the east garden of Daitokuji Honbo, which is also attributed to Enshu for its unique hedge.
The small garden of the 12-mat shoin-style tea house, Bosen, is a tea garden wit h a stone lantern and a stone basin placed with great reserve. The tea garden is so designed that it looks more impressive seen through the lower half of the unique shoji sliding screens.
The garden of Jikinyu-ken shoin house is the most picturesque of the three gardens here, with shrubs, rocks and stone bridges arranged beautifully. It is said t o have been copied from a scene of Lake Biwa and its scene spots in the province of Omi, Enshu's hometown. The rocks in the right rear are in the so-called sanzon (three Buddhist saints) style, a traditional way of arranging rocks in a group of three.
Kobori Enshu is said to have designed the garden of Koho-an, which roughly means a villa of a lone boat, moored or afloat, to represent the sea, lake of river and to be viewed from inside the boat, which in this case are the buildings of t he Koho-an. The gardens underwent change later in the edo period but are still regarded as Enshu's representative works.
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