During the postwar Showa period, Japan was gripped by a frenzy of nation-building. Modernist methods of landscaping by looking at scale models from above became widespread, and the traditional concern for user experience and human scale were disregarded. Buildings were set on concrete platforms, and the traditional Japanese art of creating gardens around them gave way to vast concrete plazas around tall buildings. The landscape of Makuhari Messe, the new business center in Chiba, is a good example of this national phenomenon that is only now being recognized for its environmental damage. The many treeless plazas designed by Kenzo Tange Associates are another example. One can only imagine what the landscaping in these places would be like if traditional Japanese garden sensibilities had been applied instead.
Symbolism and Abstraction in Japanese Gardens
Since the time of the Sakuteiki, the ancient garden treatise, a good Japanese garden is said to have six attributes: seclusion, antiquity, spaciousness, human ingenuity, water, and scenic views. Other important concepts have been added to this list over time. While the skill to make the garden soulful must be inculcated over time, concepts that make the Japanese garden special are discussed in the paragraphs below.
Besides the many elements from Onmyodo, Buddhism and Taoism touched on above, there are other aspects of the Japanese garden that can deepen the experience of the visitor. For example, certain plants are imbued with meanings. Pines and evergreens indicate permanence or longevity, while bamboos symbolize truth and vigor. Although Zen priests in the Muromachi period spurned the “superstitious” beliefs expressed in the Sakuteiki, their gardens retain many abstract values related to the phenomena of nature or mind discussed in the Sakuteiki over a millennium earlier. For example, water has always been a symbol of purification. Whereas in pre-Zen gardens it may have symbolized the dragon god, in Zen gardens it symbolizes the cooling effect of rain in summer. White sand symbolizes the ocean while stones symbolize islands. Stone lanterns, and particularly the “hour jewel” atop lanterns, are a symbol of enlightenment. However looking for symbols in Japanese gardens is not always necessary and may even be counterproductive. Gardens like Ryoan-ji (page 54) were designed to free the mind from thought, though the temptation to associate meanings to this garden seems irresistible, and interpretations of it certainly abound.
No concept in Japanese design is more expressive and harder to explain than wabi sabi. This aesthetic and philosophical idea seeks to express the inherent beauty of things that are imperfect and impermanent. It derives from Buddhist teachings about the contemplation of imperfection, constant change due to passage of time, and the impermanence of all things. Words used to describe wabi sabi include simplicity, minimalism, understatement, rusticity and loneliness. Appreciation of the passage of time and of the impermanence of things is reflected in the choice of garden materials that are imperfect, old or worn out, and compositions that seek to recall the lonely depths of remote forests. Ornamentation is avoided, and the essence of nature highlighted. Human vulnerability, fragility of existence, and the soft but inexorable passage of time are expressed through the deliberate use of old and worn materials. Taikan Yokoyama, the famous Japanese artist known for his views of Mount Fuji, commented that the Japanese worship imperfection. Driven by Zen ideals that seek to look beyond temporary physical perfection, Japanese gardens seek a “perfect imperfection” by, for example, raking a perfect geometric pattern and then sprinkling a few dead leaves over it. The spirit of wabi sabi is found equally in a large tea garden or a small garden in a tray.
The views in a Japanese garden are often conceived in terms of foreground, mid-ground and background. The background views often consist of a shakkei, or “borrowed scenery,” that is outside the garden itself. Distant mountains, forests, plains, or sea visible from the garden are taken into account while laying out the garden. The mid-ground is designed to provide a sense of continuity between the distant background and the plants or objects in the immediate foreground, so as to make the shakkei an integral part of the garden, and greatly enhance the perception of space within it.
There may be places in the garden where the designer would like the visitor to pause and admire a particular view or an object with fresh eyes. This is achieved by placing a particularly uneven or large stone at that place in the garden path, so that the guest is most likely to look down before looking up again with fresh eyes at the object or view presented.
Japanese gardeners also use reduction in scale as a scenic technique. Stroll gardens often recreate and miniaturize natural views or scenic places of interest such as sacred mountains, rivers, or ponds. Reduction in scale is adopted in Zen gardens through the use of abstract symbols. Small mounds may represent large mountains, and wave patterns in the sand express miniaturized seas. Tea gardens, naka niwa interior gardens and bonsai are miniaturized and idealized versions of nature. Miniaturization is particularly useful in the limited spaces in urban gardens.
Seclusion and space are luxuries in Japan, and the best architecture and gardens strive to achieve them. Japanese gardens use the principle of “hide and seek” to create intimate spaces. Gardens are designed so that the visitors do not see all the components of a garden at once. A building or a view may be highlighted and revealed and then again hidden from view only to reappear later, creating a sense of mystery and discovery referred to as yugen in Japanese.
Since natural landscapes are never symmetrical, Japanese gardens follow this rule in their representation of nature. Rare natural things such as Mount Fuji that are nearly symmetrical were worshipped as sacred objects in Shintoism, but symmetrical compositions were otherwise avoided in favor of asymmetrical designs with a dynamic balance. Symmetrical balance is considered too easy and static. This aspect of Japanese design sets it apart from nearly all other aesthetic traditions in the world, including Western and Chinese.
Heightened sensitivity to seasonal change is another important element of Japanese gardens, flower arrangements, tea ceremony and cooking. The colors and moods of the seasons are celebrated with enthusiasm. Kiyomori Taira, a powerful warlord from the Heian period, established a palace for each season: a flowery palace for spring, a watery palace for summer, a palace for moon viewing in fall, and a palace for snow viewing in winter. Chinese geomancy also promoted an emphasis on seasonality in gardens. According to Shijinso theory, seasons relate to the four directions. Spring is to the east, summer to south, autumn to the west, winter to the north. Different plants thus represent these seasons in a garden.
The ideal for a Japanese gardener, architect, artist or craftsman of the past was to be as invisible in their creations as possible, and to create something that looked like it had always been there. This goal was accomplished by understanding materials deeply, and using them in a way that a person’s hand would be least obvious. Once planted, gardens were meticulously maintained to imitate casual, natural growth. Good gardeners seek to get guidance from a stone as to where it wishes to be placed, while builders pray to the land in a ceremony called Jichinsai before starting construction. This is a ceremony of gently seeking permission from the land to build upon it, rather than the groundbreaking ceremony observed elsewhere. The ideal of the past was not to control nature, but coexist with it, with an understanding that nature will outlast the hand that shapes it.
Japanese gardens and buildings are designed to complement each other. A uniquely Japanese space called engawa borders rooms facing a garden, and provides a transitional space that can be opened to the inside or outside, and made into a part of the garden depending upon the seasons. In summer, storm shutters and sliding screens are pushed away, and the engawa becomes a pleasant place to sit and enjoy the garden. Sliding away a few screens removes the barrier between inside and outside. The garden may come right into the tea hut, as shown in the example of Seison-kaku (page 176). When snow shutters are removed from the wide eaves of Mimou House (page 74) in summer, the garden, the engawa and the interior flow into each other and the sounds of birds chirping permeate every corner.
How do you pour eternity into a teacup? How do you evoke the feeling of uninterrupted deep forests and shaded valleys in the narrow confines of a warrior residence or an urban Zen temple? This was the real problem in historically crowded Japan, and the