Japanese garden

Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden designers to suggest a natural landscape, and to express the fragility of existence as well as time's unstoppable advance.

No original examples of these survive, but they were replaced by the "paradise garden" associated with Pure Land Buddhism, with a Buddha shrine on an island in the lake.

Their aesthetic was influenced by the distinct characteristics of the Honshu landscape: rugged volcanic peaks, narrow valleys, mountain streams with waterfalls and cascades, lakes, and beaches of small stones.

[4] Japanese gardens have their roots in the national religion of Shinto, with its story of the creation of eight perfect islands, and of the shinchi, the lakes of the gods.

They often took the form of unusual rocks or trees marked with cords of rice fiber (shimenawa) and surrounded with white stones or pebbles, a symbol of purity.

[5] The white gravel courtyard became a distinctive feature of Shinto shrines, Imperial Palaces, Buddhist temples, and Zen gardens.

Replicas of this legendary mountain, the symbol of a perfect world, are a common feature of Japanese gardens, as are rocks representing turtles and cranes.

The following year, "The Emperor launched a double-hulled boat in the pond of Ijishi at Ihare, and went aboard with his imperial concubine, and they feasted sumptuously together".

In 612 CE, the Empress Suiko had a garden built with an artificial mountain, representing Shumi-Sen, or Mount Sumeru, reputed in Hindu and Buddhist legends to be located at the centre of the world.

The south garden of the imperial residences had a uniquely Japanese feature: a large empty area of white sand or gravel.

The social life in the gardens was memorably described in the classic Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, written in about 1005 by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting to the empress.

It usually had a cherry tree or elm to bring color in the spring, but otherwise did not have bright flowers or exotic plants that would distract the attention of the visitor.

Sen no Rikyū decreed that the garden should be left unswept for several hours before the ceremony, so that leaves would be scattered in a natural way on the path.

[23] The Edo period saw the widespread use of a new kind of Japanese architecture, called sukiya-zukuri, which means literally "building according to chosen taste".

After World War II, the principal builders of gardens were no longer private individuals, but banks, hotels, universities and government agencies.

Sometimes one or more rocks, called suteishi ("nameless" or "discarded"), are placed in seemingly random locations in the garden, to suggest spontaneity, though their placement is carefully chosen.

The concentration of the interest on such detail as the shape of a rock or the moss on a stone lantern led at times to an overemphatic picturesqueness and accumulation of minor features that, to Western eyes accustomed to a more general survey, may seem cluttered and restless.Such attention to detail can be seen at places such as Midori Falls in Kenroku-en Garden in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, as the rocks at the waterfall's base were changed at various times by six different daimyō.

[38] Stone water basins (tsukubai) were originally placed in gardens for visitors to wash their hands and mouth before the tea ceremony.

Very old pine trees are often supported by wooden crutches called tsurazue or hōdzue shichū, or their branches are held by cords, to keep them from breaking under the weight of snow.

In the late 16th century, a new art was developed in the Japanese garden; that of ōkarikomi (大刈込), the technique of trimming bushes into balls or rounded shapes which imitate waves.

Natural environments in the gardens offer habitats that attract wild animals; frogs and birds are notable as they contribute with a pleasant soundscape.

These gardens had large lakes with small islands, where musicians played during festivals and ceremonies worshippers could look across the water at the Buddha.

These gardens featured a lake island called Nakajima, where the Buddha hall was located, connected to the shore by an arching bridge.

The style of garden takes its name from the roji, or path to the teahouse, which is supposed to inspire the visitor to meditation to prepare him for the ceremony.

During the Edo period, merchants began building small gardens in the space behind their shops, which faced the street, and their residences, located at the rear.

Citing even older Chinese sources, it explains how to organize the garden, from the placement of rocks and streams to the correct depth of ponds and height of cascades.

And, if a large rock pointed toward the north or west is placed near a gallery, the owner of the garden will be forced to leave before a year passes.

The opening words of Illustrations for designing mountain, water and hillside field landscapes (1466) are "If you have not received the oral transmissions, you must not make gardens" and its closing admonition is "You must never show this writing to outsiders.

[66] One painter who influenced the Japanese garden was Josetsu (1405–1423), a Chinese Zen monk who moved to Japan and introduced a new style of ink-brush painting, moving away from the romantic misty landscapes of the earlier period, and using asymmetry and areas of white space, similar to the white space created by sand in zen gardens, to set apart and highlight a mountain or tree branch or other element of his painting.

The lush courtyards at Du Cane Court – an art deco block of flats in Balham, London, built between 1935 and 1938 – were designed by Kusumoto.