Japanese rock garden

Ryoan-ji (late 15th century) in Kyoto, Japan, the most famous example of a zen garden

a mountain, waterfall and gravel "river" at Daisen-in (1509-1513)

The Japanese rock garden' (枯山水, karesansui) or "dry landscape" garden, often called 'a "Zen garden", features carefully-composed arrangements of rocks, and uses raked gravel to represent water. It is usually relatively small, surrounded by a wall, and is meant to be seen from a single viewpoint outside the garden. Classical zen gardens were created at temples of zen Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan during the Muromachi Period. They were intended to imitate the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance, and to serve an aid to meditation about the true meaning of life.

History

Early Japanese rock gardens

Rock gardens existed in Japan at least since the Heian Period (784-1185). These early gardens were described in the first manual of Japanese gardens, Sakuteiki, or Records of Garden Keeping, written at the end of the 11th century by Tachibana no Toshitsuna (1028-1094). They were largely copied from the Chinese gardens of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), where groups of rocks symbolized Mount Penglai, the legendary mountain-island home of the Eight Immortals in Chinese mythology, known in Japanese as Horai.. The Sakuteiki descibed exactly how rocks should be placed. In one passage, he wrote: "In a place where there is neither a lake or a stream, one can put in place what is called a kare-sansui, or dry landscape..." This kind of garden featured either rocks placed upright like mountains, or laid out in a miniature landscape of hills and ravines, with few plants. He described several other styles of rock garden, which usually included a stream or pond, including the great river style, the mountain river style, and the marsh style. The ocean style featured rocks that appeared to have been eroded by waves, surrounded by a bank of white sand, like a beach. .

White sand and gravel had long been a feature of Japanese gardens. In the Shinto religion, it was used to symbolize purity, and was used around shrines, temples, and palaces.

The classic zen gardens of the Muromachi Period

Zen Buddhism was introduced into Japan at the end of the 12th century, and quickly achieved a wide following, particularly among the military class and war lords, who admired its doctrine of self-discipline. The gardens of the early zen temples in Japan resembled Chinese gardens of the time, with lakes and islands. But in Kyoto in the 14th and 15th century, a new kind of garden appeared at the important zen temples. These zen gardens were designed to stimulate meditation. "Nature, if you made it expressive by reducing it to its abstract forms, could transmit the most profound thoughts by its simple presence," Michel Baridon wrote. "The compositions of stone, already common China, became in Japan, veritable petrified landscapes, which seemed suspended in time, as in a certain moments of Noh theater, which dates to the same period."

The invention of the zen garden was closely connected with developments in Japanese ink landscape paintings. Japanese painters such as Sesshu (1420-1506) and Soami (died 1525) greatly simplified their views of nature, showing only the most essential aspects of nature, leaving great areas of white around the black and gray drawings. Soami is said to have been personally involved in the design of two of the most famous zen gardens in Kyoto, Ryoan-ji and Daisen-in, though his involvement has never been documented with certainty.

Michel Baridon wrote, "The famous zen gardens of the Muromachi Period showed that Japan had carried the the art of gardens to the highest degree of intellectual refinement that it was possible to attain."

Overview

Japanese gardens are gardens in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature, they are constantly sculpted to maintain and enhance the overall experience. The underlying structure of a Japanese garden is determined by the architecture; that is, the framework of enduring elements such as buildings, verandas and terraces, paths, tsukiyama (artificial hills), and stone compositions. Over time, it is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of training and pruning.

Karesansui gardens can be extremely abstract and represent (miniature) landscapes also called "mind-scapes". This Buddhist preferred way to express cosmic beauty in worldly environments is inextricable from Zen Buddhism.

A brief definition of karesansui from the "Bilingual dictionary of Japanese Garden Terms":

"Dry landscape (garden); dry garden. A garden style unique to Japan, which appeared in the Muromachi period (1392-1568). Using neither ponds nor streams, it makes symbolic representations of natural landscapes using stone arrangements, white sand, moss and pruned trees. In Sakuteiki (a garden book with notes on garden making: see the notes) of the Heian period (794-1185), the term indicated a stone arrangement in a part of the garden without water."

Unlike other traditional gardens, there is no water present in Karesansui gardens (or the karesansui compartment of a garden). There is gravel or sand, raked or not raked, that symbolizes sea, ocean, rivers or lakes.

The act of raking the gravel into a pattern recalling waves or rippling water has an aesthetic function. Zen priests practice this raking also to help their concentration. Achieving perfection of lines is not easy. Rakes are according to the patterns of ridges as desired and limited to some of the stone objects situated within the gravel area. Nonetheless often the patterns are not static. Developing variations in patterns is a creative and inspiring challenge.

Stone arrangements and other miniature elements are used to represent mountains and natural water elements and scenes, islands, rivers and waterfalls. Stone and shaped shrubs (karikomi, hako-zukuri topiary) are used interchangeably. In most gardens moss is used as a ground cover to create "land" covered by forest.

Other, mostly stone, objects are sometimes used symbolically to represent mountains, islands, boats, or even people. Karesansui gardens are often, but not always, meant to be viewed from a single vantage point from a seated position.

In the garden book Sakuteiki "Creating a garden" is expressed as "setting stones", ishi wo taten koto; literally, the "act of setting stones upright." At the time the Sakuteiki was written, the placement of stones was perceived as the primary act of gardening. Similar expressions are also used in the text, however, to mean literally "setting garden stones" rather than "creating gardens".

Make sure that all the stones, right down to the front of the arrangement, are placed with their best sides showing. If a stone has an ugly-looking top you should place it so as to give prominence to its side. Even if this means it has to lean at a considerable angle, no one will notice. There should always be more horizontal than vertical stones. If there are "running away" stones there must be "chasing" stones. If there are "leaning" stones, there must be "supporting" stones.

Note that in many cases stone and shaped shrubs (karikomi) can be used interchangeably.

The influence of Zen on garden design was (probably) first described as such by Kuck in the early 20th century and disputed by Kuitert by the end of that century. What is not disputed is the fact that karesansui garden scenery was (and still is) inspired (or even based on) originally Chinese and later also Japanese, landscape paintings.

Though each garden is different in its composition, they mostly use rock groupings and shrubs to represent a classic scene of mountains, valleys and waterfalls taken from Chinese landscape painting. In some of them the view also incorporates existing scenery, e.g. the hills behind, as "borrowed scenery" (using a technique called Shakkei).

Today, ink monochrome painting still is the art form most closely associated with Zen Buddhism. A primary design principle was the creation of a landscape based on, or at least greatly influenced by, the three-dimensional monochrome ink (sumi) landscape painting, sumi-e or suibokuga. In Japan the garden has the same status as a work of art.

The Karesansui garden in Ryōan-ji Temple

The dry garden at the Ryoan-ji

A famous Japanese rock garden is at Ryōan-ji in northwest Kyoto, Japan.

The garden is 30 meters long from east to west and 10 meters from north to south. There are no trees, just 15 irregularly shaped rocks of varying sizes, some surrounded by moss, arranged in a bed of white gravel/sand that is raked every day.

The rocks of various sizes are arranged on small white pebbles in five groups, each comprising five, two, three, two, and three rocks. The garden contains 15 rocks arranged on the surface of white pebbles in such a manner that visitors can see only 14 of them at once, from whichever angle the garden is viewed.

The garden is not attributed to any single designer, although it is commonly believed that a leading monochrome artist named Sōami (1480?-1525), in association with Daisen-in, designed it and laid it out. However, Ryōan-ji's records are contradictory and indicate some other makers, and the back of one of the 15 stones is inscribed with the names Kōtarō and Hikojirō, who might have been two of the workers that did the actual construction.

Layout

A miniature dry landscape garden

There have been many attempts to explain the karesansui garden's layout. Some of these are:

• The gravel represents ocean and the rocks represent islands.
• The rocks represent a mother tiger with her cubs, swimming to a dragon.
• The rocks form part of the kanji for heart or mind.

See Ryōan-ji for a mathematical analysis of a rock garden.

A recent suggestion, by Gert van Tonder of Kyoto University and Michael Lyons of Ritsumeikan University, is that the rocks form the subliminal image of a tree. The researchers claim the subconscious mind is sensitive to a subtle association between the rocks. They suggest this may be responsible for the calming effect of the garden.

Gallery

• 

  Shitennō-ji Honbō garden

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  A small garden in the Japanese Tea Garden of Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco

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  Sand and stone garden located in the Portland Japanese Gardens.

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  Close-up of the snow covered center of the Tsubo-en (Netherlands) o-karikomi topiary.

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  An'yō-in Garden of Taisan-ji in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan. A style where the pond is completely dry.

See also

• Garden spa
• Higashiyama Bunka in Muromachi period
• Japanese garden
• Wabi-sabi

List

Shrines and temples with rock gardens:

In Kyoto:

• Daitokuji
• Daisen-in
• Jishoji
• Myoshinji
• Rozanji
• Ryoanji
• Tofukuji

Outside Kyoto:

• An'yō-in (Kobe)
• Bingo-Ankokuji (Fukuyama)
• Harima Ankokuji (Kato, Hyogo)
• Jōmyō-ji (Kamakura)
• Kinbyōzan Zuisenji (Kamakura)
• Komyozenji (Fukuoka)
• Shitennoji (Osaka)

Bibliography

• Young, David and Michiko, (2005), The Art of the Japanese Garden, Tuttle Publishing, Vermont and Singapore, (ISBN 978-0-8048-3598-5)
• Nitschke, Gunter, (1999) Le Jardin japonais - Angle droit et forme naturelle, Taschen publishers, Paris (translated from German into French by Wolf Fruhtrunk), (ISBN 978-3-8228-3034-5)
• Baridon, Michel (1998). Les Jardins- Paysagistes, Jardiniers, Poetes. , Éditions Robert Lafont, Paris, (ISBN 2-221-06707-X)
• Murase, Miyeko, (1996), L'Art du Japon, La Pochothḕque, Paris, (ISBN 2-253-13054-0)
• Elisseeff, Danielle, (2010), Jardins japonais, Ḗditions Scala, Paris, (ISBN 978-2-35988-029-8)
• Klecka, Virginie, (2011), Concevoir, Amenager, Decorer Jardins Japonais, Rustica Editions, (ISBN 978-2-8153-0052-0)

Note

*The Sakuteiki is a garden book with notes on garden making that dates back to the late seventeenth century. Its oldest title is Senzai Hishõ, "Secret Extracts on Gardens", and was written nearly 1000 years ago, making it the oldest work on Japanese gardening. It is assumed that this was written in the 11th century by a noble man named Tachibana no Tichitsuna. In this text lies the first mention of the karesansui in literature. Only recently we saw an English modern translation of this gardening classic.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Zen gardens or Japanese garden or Gardens in Japan

• Zen Gardens: images and meaning
• Photo Gallery of Japanese Zen Gardens
• Virtual tour of the Zen Gardens in and around Kyoto
• Geometrical concepts of Japanese rock garden
• Stanford University article on the history and meaning of some Japanese gardensPDF (180 KB)
• Tsubo-en - A virtual tour of the karesansui garden in The Netherlands
• Study into the karesansui gardens of the Edo era - karesansui gardens of Traditional Samurai Residences
• Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden (Requires subscription)

  Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden (Mirror)

• Criticisms of the term "Zen Garden" - in Japanese Garden Journal