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3. Some Intrinsic

Characteristics

THE INTERACTION of primary geographical and cultural factors accounts for the development of Japan's unique arts and especially its gardens. Because Japan is an archipelago of generally mountainous terrain located in the northern latitudes and surrounded by warm ocean currents, it has abundant rainfall, heavy growth of forests, and a temperate climate with pronounced changes from season to season. And, because a small sea separates Japan from the mainland of Asia, its own native folkways were long allowed to develop relatively untouched by outside influences. But, though isolated from the rest of Asia, it was never completely inaccessible. As a result, Japan's early culture of primitive animism and nature worship underwent great changes under the impact of the introduction of the sophistication of China and Korea. Through the synthesis of Japan's native traditions and customs with vigorous Chinese and Korean intellectual, artistic, and religious teachings there developed a new and fuller Japanese culture which attained great subtlety, refinement, and spiritual depth. The strongest influence of all was Buddhism.

The Buddhist religion itself had felt the formative effects of Confucian and Taoist ideals and philosophy as it passed through China in the long journey from India to Japan. And, within the world of Buddhism, it was the sect of Zen that left the deepest impression on Japanese art. From this penetrating contact emerged the spiritual concept of man's partnership with nature. This concept became the hallmark of Japanese painting, architecture, literature, and, not least, of Japanese gardens. We shall term this humanized naturalism.

Humanized Naturalism. Partnership with nature requires that man and nature be on very familiar terms. Thus, the Japanese artist went out to study nature in all its varied forms. He examined it at close-up and from afar so that while executing his art he was able to visualize all aspects of nature under all conditions in all seasons. The very nature of this process however, meant that what the artist could give was always his subjective interpretation. The garden artist too could never merely copy nature. The naturalness of Japanese gardens became an essence of some aspect of nature, modest or grand, interpreted by the garden artist as his impression of real nature. In this process his deep reverence for nature was implicit.

Partnership and familiarity with nature soon revealed to the garden artist several artistic truths, He saw that the over-all impression one receives from nature is one of strong asymmetry. Though in minute details, such as the arrangement of a flower's stamen and pistil, the shape of a leaf, or snow crystals, nature might be symmetrical, still the larger view of nature revealed just the opposite. This observation became a principle of design of the landscape garden, but here nature's violent asymmetry became tamed and balanced by the humanism of man.

Color Plate 5. The off-white gravel groundcover provides an astringent contrast with the bright reds of the autumn foliage and the soft, dark tones of the rocks and evergreen plantings. (Shugaku-in Imperial Villa, Kyoto.)

Color Plates 6 & 7. This is the prospect that greets you when you pass through the street gate into the front garden of this private residence. The walk is of three-inch-thick granite slabs set in a bed of sand, with dry, hairline joints. The straightforward formality of the pattern of the walk is offset by the abstract shape of the gravel "pool," the natural rocks set in and around its shoreline, the moss groundcover, and the shrub plantings. Since this picture was taken shortly after the garden was completed, the moss had not yet taken hold and spread its deep green cover. Plant materials used here are cryptomeria, Japanese andromeda, Japanese maple, and Japanese holly. Designed by Tansai Sano. (Toyoda residence, Juso, Osaka Prefecture)

The preference for asymmetry was encouraged by Taoist and Zen teachings which intellectualized it as an element of Japanese esthetics. In The Book of Tea Kakuzo Okakura called his country's art the "abode of the unsymmetrical." Contrasting Western and Asian approaches to design, he pointed out how the Taoist-Zen conception of perfection differed from that of the West. The dynamic nature of Taoist and Zen philosophies "laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea-room (as in the garden) it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself. Since Zen has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the Far East has purposely avoided bilateral symmetry as expressing not only completion but repetition. Uniformity of design was considered as fatal to the freshness of imagination. Thus, landscapes, birds and flowers became the favorite subjects for depiction rather than the human figure, the latter being present in the person of the beholder himself."

In another passage Okakura advised the artist to leave something unsaid so that the beholder be given the chance "to complete the idea. Thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum; is. there for you to enter and fill up to the full measure of your esthetic emotion."....

This humanized naturalism of which we are speaking has a further human element in that, though a Japanese garden is basically naturalistic, it by no means is restricted to the use of nothing but natural forms. But, when geometrical, man-made shapes are used, they serve as a foil to frame and set off the elements of purely naturalistic form. For example, the straight line of a clipped hedge or a path of geometrically shaped steppingstones commonly serves as a contrasting non-naturalistic element. Or, geometrical shapes play an important role as symbols of natural forms. Thus, a bank of rounded, sheared azalea bushes in several sizes and heights, seemingly piled one upon the other in depth, may symbolize mountains. In such a case they are active, humanized substitutes for rock and stone, which, although inert, are also felt to have a life of their own (see Plate 5).

Line & Mass vs. Color. Besides the faithful adherence of the Japanese garden artist to principles of asymmetry, he depends also upon elements of line and mass rather than color to create his landscape design. The unity of the basic structure of the garden is formed by the arrangement of massed evergreen trees and shrubs combined with rocks and artifacts. The prevailing hues are in greens, browns, beiges, and greys, of varying tones. No matter what the season, the main lines and forms remain almost unchanged. The resort to line and mass in garden composition is again, as in the case of asymmetry, only the reproduction in humanized form of what the garden artist has observed in real nature. It is a rare and fleeting phenomenon when color figures importantly in the natural landscape of mountains, forests, seacoasts, streams, and fields. Thus, the garden-maker in Japan remains true to nature in adhering to line and mass for the principal structure of his garden, keeping color in a minor role. (See Plate 6.)

Fig. 1. Genji built a garden for Murasaki, his wife. One corner of it may well have looked like this garden belonging to a nobleman of the same time, the Heian period (794-1185). From the picture scroll Kasuga Gongen Reigen-ki.

Genji's Garden. Color was not always used with such restraint. In a much earlier period of Japanese history, from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, gardens were open, gay, and filled with flowers and blossoming trees and shrubs as well as all types of water features. They were naturalistic gardens built as idealizations of the real world outside, but more closely resembling the then-prevalent ideas of Heaven. The gardens adorned the palaces and villas of the royal family and wealthy nobles. They contained streams which wound through them to empty into lakes and ponds, which were often large enough to allow shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boats to cruise along their shores. These were boating and excursion gardens, which served as playgrounds for the ranks of the nobility. Islands in the lakes and ponds denoted such Chinese cosmological symbols as Horaijima, the Island of Paradise (see Plate 96). Sometimes a line of rocks was laid out in the water, yodomari-ishi, to represent ships moored at night in a Chinese harbor (Plate 98). Or, one rock projecting out of the water would symbolize takara-bune, the treasure ship of Chinese and Japanese legend.

For a picture of those gardens in the Heian period (794-1185) we have the colorful description (see also Fig. 1) written over a thousand years ago by Lady Murasaki Shikibu in her novel The Tale of Genji, as translated so ably by Arthur Waley:

"Genji effected great improvement in the appearance of the grounds by a judicious handling of knoll and lake, for, though such feature already there in abundance, he found it necessary here to cut away a slope, there to dam a stream, that each occupant of the various quarters might look out of her windows upon such a prospect as pleased her best. To the southeast he raised the level of the ground and on this bank planted a profusion of early flowering trees. At the foot of this slope the lake curved with especial beauty, and in the foreground, just beneath the windows, he planted borders of cinquefoil, of red-plum, cherry, wisteria, kerria, rock-azalea and other such plants as are at their best in springtime... while here and there, in places where they would not obstruct his main plan, autumn beds were cleverly interwoven with the rest.

"Akikonomu's garden was full of such trees as in autumn-time turn to the deepest hue. The stream above the waterfall was cleared out and deepened to a considerable distance; and that the noise of the cascade might carry further, he set great boulders in mid-stream, against which the current crashed and broke....

"In the northeastern garden there was a cool spring, the neighborhood of which seemed likely to yield an agreeable refuge from the summer heat. In the borders near the house upon this side he planted Chinese bamboos, and, a little further off, tall-stemmed forest trees whose thick leaves roofed airy tunnels of shade, pleasant as those of the most lovely upland wood. This garden was fenced with hedges of the white deutzia flower, the orange tree, the briar-rose and the giant peony; with many other sorts of bush and tall flower so skillfully spread about among them that neither spring nor autumn would ever lack in bravery.

"... Along the stream he planted appropriate purple irises.

To the north of Lady Akashi's rooms rose a high embankment, screened by a close-set wall of pine trees, planted there on the purpose that she might have the pleasure of seeing them when their boughs were laden with snow; and for her delight in the earlier days of the winter there was a great bed of chrysanthemums, which he pictured her enjoying on some morning when all the garden was white with frost.

"... Murasaki's Spring garden seemed to become every day more enchanting. The little wood on the hill beyond the lake, the bridge that joined the two islands, the mossy banks that seemed to grow greener not every day but every hour—could anything have looked more tempting.

"... The rowers brought them close in under the rocky bank of the channel between the two large islands... the shape of every little ledge and crag of stone had been as carefully devised as if a painter had traced them with his brush. Here and there in the distance the topmost boughs of an orchard showed above the mist, so heavily laden with blossoms that it looked as though a bright carpet were spread in mid-air. Far away they could just catch sight of Murasaki's apartments, marked by the deeper green of the willow boughs that swept her courtyards, and by the shimmer of her flowering orchards, which even at this distance seemed to shed their fragrance amid the isles and rocks. In the world outside, the cherry blossom was almost over; but here it seemed to laugh at decay, and around the palace even the wisteria that ran along the covered alleys and porticos was all in bloom, but not a flower past its best; while here, where the boats were tied, mountain-kerria poured its yellow blossom over the rocky cliffs in a torrent of color that was mirrored in the waters of the lake below.... "

Reflecting the mood of the court life of the period, those gardens of Genji's were for carefree pleasure for the few who could afford such a life. Deciduous and flowering trees were used in great masses. But as social conditions changed, so did the gardens. By the thirteenth century the gay life of the Heian period had crumbled. The ensuing years of civil war and the appeal of Zen Buddhism's philosophy of simplicity and meditation influenced all branches of the arts. Gardens became more sober and restrained, more impervious to the effects of seasonal change. Evergreen plant materials became predominant.

The Static Quality & Evergreens. The slow, measured, almost drifting tempo of Japanese gardens today is produced by the predominance of slow-growing broad-leaf and needle evergreens combined with rock. Together they form the main structural skeleton of the garden, contrasting with deciduous elements such as maple, cherry, and plum trees, which are generally kept smaller than the evergreen through rigorous and regular pruning. (See Plate 6.)

In comparison with American or European temperate-climate gardens, showing dynamic changes from season to season, Japanese gardens remain static, varying little with the changing seasons. This contrast illustrates again differences in Eastern and Western views of life. Buddhists, certainly, tend to take the long view of the world and life—the revolving wheel that comes back to its original position—while in the West it is action, change, and pragmatic views which shape our lives. We spend little time contemplating in the sort of atmosphere where life seems to be holding its breath.

Since the Japanese garden generally is built on a small piece of land and because of its close and intimate relationship to the house and the people who live there, it has to be slowed down. Such intimate gardens which changed swiftly with the seasons would disturb and jangle the nerves of the people who came into close daily contact with them.

There are also horticultural reasons for the wide use of evergreens. Although Japan lies in the north temperate zone, its winters, tempered by warm ocean currents, are milder over most of the country than the winters of much of Europe and North America. Consequently, the frost-sensitive broadleaf varieties of evergreens survive Japanese winters. Perhaps, if American and European winters were milder, ever-greens would also assume greater importance in the basic structure of gardens in the West.

We in the West, whose homes are in areas of extreme seasonal changes, have learned to appreciate the dynamic development of a plant's life cycle. We feel something sad or beautiful and inspiring in the bare starkness of a winter landscape, and something exciting and joyous in trees bursting with spring buds. The aspects of the landscape as it shifts with each season remind us of the pulsing, rushing rhythm of our own lives. It is possible, of course, to take the middle road by striking a balance between static and dynamic effects. The final decision remains with those who will use the garden—their tastes and pace of life.

Yin & Yang. Familiarity with only the material elements of a Japanese garden, however, brings understanding up to a point which is still not at the heart of this unique art form. There are broader questions. Why is it that Japanese gardens seem to have more structural solidity and depth than most gardens in the West, gardens which by comparison seem frail, shallow, insubstantial, and meaningless? A partial answer to this question may be found in the collection of Taoist teachings, Tao-te-ching, formulated by Laotse in China several thousand years ago. This propounds the principle of opposites: in weakness there is strength; in passivity and non-resistance you win. It is the balance of light and dark, the positive yosei and the negative insei, the Yin and the Yang.

When these opposite concepts are observed in nature we find not opposition but union. One complements the other to compose reality, the truth of creation. Japanese gardens, with their rock and plant life, embody this reality and therefore seem alive, vibrant, part of life. The positive, male element is plant life in all its forms and species. The negative, female part is the rock element in myriad shapes and sizes. Rock, decomposing and being pulverized into soil becomes the mother earth. And earth, through countless ages, is pressed again into rock—a never-ending process of decomposition and composition.

Fig. 2. These are the shapes which formed the gorin-no-to, or sacred stone tower, from which both the five-storied pagoda and the stone lantern were to develop. The five parts symbolize the five elements of the universe in ancient Japanese cosmology—sky, wind, fire, water, and earth. A simplified version symbolizes spirituality, consisting of heaven (the triangle) and earth (the rectangle), with man (the circle) between them.

Although as compared with plant life, rock and earth would seem the stronger and more substantial, its life is of an inner quality and strength, a typical female characteristic. Trees and shrubs and grass and flowers show an active, exuberant vitality and growth. Rock and soil embody the waiting, receiving element, while plants show their impatience, spurting ahead, reaching out, externally vital.

Is it because Yin and Yang meet in a Japanese garden that it seems settled, more complete, rounded out, more stabile and solid? The two opposites are balanced so that neither one is in excess; just so does nature automatically achieve its own balance if left to itself without the interference of men. The Japanese garden artist seeks to discover this balance and to make his garden freely in whatever design or style he chooses, with rock and plant life happily wed in his composition. (See Plates 14, 37, and 56.)

Garden builders in the West must also assume this task if they desire to make gardens in this spirit. They may achieve this result through pure intuition. But they are more likely to be successful if they follow the example of their Japanese brothers, who, from childhood, and from the advantages of an ancient and noble tradition, have studied nature in all its forms and moods. The modern garden builder can learn more from a walk in the woods, fields, and mountains than from all the home and garden magazines and manuals. Interest, love of nature, patience, open eyes, and curiosity are the only tools he needs. For more than a thousand years of Japanese gardens this has been the lesson taught by Buddhist priest, artist, tea master, and garden designer.

Something of Symbolism. Working with rock, gravelly sand, plant material, and ceramic, stone, metal, and wooden artifacts, Japanese garden builders from earliest times have made use of certain conventional forms which have represented to them both artistic truths as well as symbols in Buddhism and Shintoism (see Plates 7-9). The triangle, circle, and rectangle have been considered the fundamental shapes in all design as well as geometric abstractions symbolizing the basic elements composing the universe. The triangle represents heaven or fire; the circle, water; and the rectangle, the earth (see Fig. 2). In a religious context the triangle symbolizes the hands of man, pressed together, pointing heavenward in prayer; the circle represents man or the mirror, one of the three most sacred Shinto symbols. To these three basic forms are added the half circle or the half moon, an abstraction denoting the wind; and a persimmon-shaped, bulbous globe for the sky. These five forms are the parts of the Japanese stone lantern.

To discover in a garden the rectangle, triangle, and circle we must think in abstract terms. One day I went with my teacher to see the famous rock, moss, and sand garden of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto (Plate 10). I reasoned that the rectangle was the outline of the garden itself, the area of sand enclosed by a low, earthen plaster wall. I then saw that a series of triangles were suggested by imaginary lines one might draw between the rocks within each group and between the rock groups themselves. But I searched in vain for the circle. Finally I turned to my teacher. "Where is the circle?" I asked. My teacher smiled and said: "Stay here for a few hours. Relax, Quietly look at the garden and you will soon become a part of it. The circle is you."