Flowers are also carefully chosen by their season of flowering. Moss is often used to suggest that the garden is ancient. Trees are carefully chosen and arranged for their autumn colors. Nothing in a Japanese garden is natural or left to chance each plant is chosen according to aesthetic principles, either to hide undesirable sights, to serve as a backdrop to certain garden features, or to create a picturesque scene, like a landscape painting or postcard. Momiji in the temple of Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto Sometimes if they were part of a temple garden, they were painted red, following the Chinese tradition, but for the most part they were unpainted.ĭuring the Edo period, when large promenade gardens became popular, streams and winding paths were constructed, with a series of bridges, usually in a rustic stone or wood style, to take visitors on a tour of the scenic views of the garden. At Byōdō-in garden in Kyoto, a wooden bridge connects the Phoenix pavilion with a small island of stones, representing the Mount Penglai or Mount Horai, the island home of the Eight Immortals of Daoist teaching, The bridge symbolized the path to paradise and immortality.īridges could be made of stone ( ishibashi), or of wood, or made of logs with earth on top, covered with moss ( dobashi) they could be either arched ( soribashi) or flat ( hirabashi). The bridge at Byōdō-in temple (1052) represented the way to the island of the immortals, and paradiseīridges first appeared in the Japanese garden during the Heian period. Rock placement is a general "aim to portray nature in its essential characteristics" – the essential goal of all Japanese gardens. The specific placement of stones in Japanese gardens to symbolically represent islands (and later to include mountains), is found to be an aesthetically pleasing property of traditional Japanese gardens. White sand represented purity, but sand could also be gray, brown or bluish-black. Later it was used in the Japanese rock garden or Zen Buddhist gardens to represent water or clouds. ![]() In ancient Japan, sand ( suna) and gravel ( jari) were used around Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. In a three-arrangement, a tallest rock usually represents heaven, the shortest rock is the earth, and the medium-sized rock is humanity, the bridge between heaven and earth. Rocks are arranged in careful compositions of two, three, five or seven rocks, with three being the most common. Rocks and water also symbolize yin and yang, ( in and yō in Japanese) in Buddhist philosophy the hard rock and soft water complement each other, and water, though soft, can wear away rock. Sand or gravel can represent a beach, or a flowing river. A vertical rock may represent Mount Horai, the legendary home of the Eight Immortals, or Mount Sumeru of Buddhist teaching, or a carp jumping from the water. Rock, sand and gravel are an essential feature of the Japanese garden. The south garden at Ninna-ji, a zen rock garden It notes that if possible a cascade should face toward the moon and should be designed to capture the moon's reflection in the water. The Sakuteiki described seven kinds of cascades. ![]() In sacred temple gardens, there is usually an island which represents Mount Penglai or Mount Hōrai, the traditional home of the Eight Immortals.Ī cascade or waterfall is an important element in Japanese gardens, a miniature version of the waterfalls of Japanese mountain streams. Traditional Japanese gardens have small islands in the lakes. According to the Sakuteiki, another favorable arrangement is for the water to flow from north, which represents water in Buddhist cosmology, to the south, which represents fire, which are opposites (yin and yang) and therefore will bring good luck. Water flowing from east to west will carry away evil, and the owner of the garden will be healthy and have a long life. According to the Sakuteiki, the water should enter the garden from the east or southeast and flow toward the west because the east is the home of the Green Dragon ( seiryu) an ancient Chinese divinity adapted in Japan, and the west is the home of the White Tiger, the divinity of the east. ![]() The rules for the placement of water were laid out in the first manual of Japanese gardens. In traditional gardens, the ponds and streams are carefully placed according to Buddhist geomancy, the art and science of putting things in the place most likely to attract good fortune.
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