According to British garden designer Sophie Walker's book “Japanese Gardens,'' when the Buddha was once asked to give a sermon about a flower he had been given, he instead “stare silently at the flower.'' This spiritual moment gave birth to Zen Buddhism and inspired the tranquil and eternal dry landscape or rock garden known as Karesansui.
Unlike a strolling garden, where visitors are guided along a set path and admire beautiful scenery or a tea room, a Karesansui can be viewed from the upper verandah, creating a sense of imaginative journey through the garden. It provides an advanced experience and reveals its essence. meditation.
Rocks are artfully placed along expanses of fine gravel that the monks raked to create ripples and represent water, whether pointing to a specific landscape or quietly abstract. , they are a source of thought. Ryoanji, built around 1500, is the best example of the latter among Kyoto's temples, with 15 temples divided into five clusters set in a moss pond within a rectangle surrounded by raked gravel. A low rock has been installed. The problem is that no matter where you sit and display, he can only display 14 at a time.
The transformation of Kyoto, Japan's leading city of temple gardens, is a quiet evolution. But a tour of some dry landscape gardens designed within the last century, and even within the last few years, shows that the Zen tradition is timeless when it comes to landscape design, and even when the crowds get bigger, moments of meditation remain Turns out it's still possible. .
Zuihoin
Upon arriving at Daitokuji, a Zen Buddhist temple in northern Kyoto, I headed to Zuihoin, one of its 22 sub-temples. This temple was founded in his year 1319, and then in 1546, Otomo Sorin, an influential feudal lord, dedicated this temple for his family. This was during the time when the Spanish and Portuguese sent missionaries to Japan. Like others, Otomo converted to Christianity, but he remained influenced by Zen Buddhism.
I arrived at the verandah of Zuiho-in through a diagonal walkway and looked out at the main Karesansui garden. This garden, which at first glance appears to be in a traditional style, was designed in his 1960s by Mirei Shigemori, a landscape architect who studied Japanese cultural arts such as tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and ink painting. When the Western modernist movement entered Japan, he decided to incorporate it in combination with traditional art and revolutionize the aesthetics of gardens that had been fixed for hundreds of years. He successfully designed more than 200 of his gardens in Japan, and collaborated with the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi on UNESCO's gardens, and Noguchi used the stones he collected in Japan for the gardens of UNESCO's Paris headquarters. It was installed on.
In the gardens of Zuiho-in, swirls of gravel have been scraped up to high peaks that look like they are in the distant sea, and there are jagged, pointed rocks that look like islands, and a giant moss-covered rock at the top that represents Mt. Hourai. It continues to the peninsula. In mythology, there are heroes called the Eight Immortals who fought for justice. Referring to Otomo's Christianity, the rocks in the second garden define a cross, and his three rows of square stones embedded in the sand elsewhere in the garden can be considered a feature of Shigemori's modernism. can.
Honen-in Temple
On the other side of town, in the Higashiyama district, Tetsugaku no Michi is a pedestrian path along the picturesque Lake Biwa Canal. Established in 1890, it is believed that the name comes from a Kyoto University philosophy professor who strolled there while meditating. As you walk along the river, depending on the season, you can see the rapids below carrying bright autumn leaves, or the delicate cherry blossoms that have fallen from the trees along the shore.
One of several Buddhist temples along the Path of Philosophy, Honen-in Temple is especially popular in the fall, with its grand staircase and entrance gate surrounded by a vast canopy of fiery red Japanese maples. Two large rectangular white sand mounds along the central path are regularly raked by the monks to create new designs. Last autumn, against the background of the ridge, maple leaves were outlined on one side and ginkgo leaves on the other.
Masashi Kajita, a high priest who lives there with his family, had a courtyard with a balcony that needed a garden, but in March of last year, he commissioned Mark Peter Keene, an American landscape architect currently living in Kyoto, to design a garden. requested. A graduate of Cornell University, Mr. Keene has lived in Japan for almost 20 years and specializes in designing Japanese gardens. Like Shigemori, he has been immersed in Japanese culture. His home and studio are currently located in Kyoto.
Only three gnarled old camellia trees remained on the rectangular site, which bloomed in season with flowers ranging from dark roses to pale pinks and whites. Keene's idea was to represent nature's constant flow, exemplified by the carbon cycle, the process by which carbon moves from the air to living things and back to the air. His garden, titled “Empty River,” creates what he describes as “a physical representation of an invisible cycle through a river of pure carbon charcoal.”
He traced on foot the narrow “rivers” winding around the roots and trunks of camellias, placing short sticks of charcoal in the long grooves to draw strong black lines in the mixture of fine brown and white gravel. There are no rocks, only small stones surrounding the courtyard and plantings, with andromeda ferns planted in the corners. Its rugged beauty is softened only in April when camellia petals are scattered over the gravel.
Keene likens this distillation of design and materials to a haiku, a Japanese three-line poem. But like the gardens of old, it also expresses the Buddhist concept of emptiness.
At Tofuku-ji Temple in the southeastern part of the city, Shigemori already designed the garden of the Hojo in 1939 using materials found on site. His avant-garde vocabulary of straight lines and grids may have seemed sensational at the time, but he is now beloved for his harmonious vitality.
From the first verandah, mostly jagged vertical clusters of rock and ripples of raked gravel radiate out, terminating at the farthest end in five moss-covered mounds like sacred mountains in the sea. You can overlook the garden to the south. The western garden is planted with alternating square fields of pruned rhododendrons and square fields of white gravel, reflecting ancient land division practices. Japanese azaleas are closely pruned so they bloom on a showy flat surface of deep pink color.
Next, a vast checkered field of square flagstones embedded in a carpet of moss appears to disappear into infinity in the northern garden. And finally, the pattern of the stone pillar foundations on the east side recreates the Big Dipper, with gravel gathered in concentric circles around each pillar to emphasize its individuality.
Mr. Keene's 2022 “Garden of Ukifune” is an allegorical interpretation of the chapter of the same name from Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century novel “The Tale of Genji,” about the “shining” Hikaru Genji, also known as the Prince of Light, and his intense romantic love. stories and political life in court.
Mr. Keene designed this hotel as a Zen courtyard for the Genji Kyoto Hotel. The hotel opened in April 2022 on the banks of the Kamogawa River, near where Genji built his vast grounds and gardens in the book. Designed by American architect Jeffrey P. Mousas, also a Kyoto resident, the hotel's plan incorporates the indoor and outdoor features of Kyoto's old merchant houses.
Mr. Keene was inspired by a scene in “Genji,'' in which one of two powerful dignitaries vying for the favor of Ukifune, 22, travels through a snowstorm and escapes with Ukifune by boat down the Uji River. Ta. As she passes the island of orange trees, she recites her poems in which she compares herself to her castaway ship. bound. “
Mr. Keene consulted with John Carpenter, curator of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who taught him about a late 16th-century “Genji” folding screen painting by Mitsuyoshi Tosa depicting this famous scene, which is in the museum's collection. It was given to me. A copy of this panel currently hangs next to a garden in Kyoto.
Mr. Keene installed a meandering “river” by cleverly placing gray river stones at the edges rather than flat, giving the flow greater direction. The garden is located between his two wings of the hotel, with “water” appearing to cascade down from one building to the next, topped by a wide, flat steel bridge. There is an observation deck that brings the design to life. The embankments on either side are thick with maples, palm trees, ferns, and moss covering the ground. The ship-shaped stone is covered with large moss, which Keene interprets as Earth floating in the galaxy.
if you go
Entrance tickets are required for Zuihoin Garden and Tofukuji Hojo Garden. Admission fees for both are 400 yen (about $2.65) for adults and 300 yen (about $2) for children.
General admission to Honen-in Temple is free, but the spring and fall opening periods are usually the first week of April and the third week of November, and the admission fee is 500 yen in the spring and 800 yen in the fall. Empty River Garden can be visited during that period.
You can tour the gardens of Genji Kyoto Hotel for free.
If you get hungry while touring the gardens, Izusen restaurant located at Daitokuji Temple Daiji-in offers a set menu of several local specialties. Most are beautifully presented in lacquered red bowls, which nest together when empty. Business hours are 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (reservation required) Prices range from 4,370 yen to 8,050 yen. It is located near Zuiho-in.
Yudofu Kisaki, a restaurant located between the Honen-in entrance and Tetsugaku no Michi, also offers vegetarian and tofu dishes by reservation. Business hours are 11am to 8pm, last order at 6pm. 4,370 yen to 8,050 yen.
To accompany you on your tour, Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata's post-World War II novel Rainbow is now available in English. Several chapters are set in Kyoto, and you can feel as if you're traveling through the same garden together. Kawabata's knowledge of plants was formidable and his concise descriptions natural and direct. A double-flowered camellia was blooming in front of the bamboo fence. ”
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