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I

MOUNTAINS, WATER, AND FRAGRANT TREES

Prior to the seventh century, it had been the custom to abandon the court of an emperor or empress after their death, as each site was then considered polluted. New sites, purified places, were prepared for each successive emperor or empress. Imperial courts grew in size, and relocations increasingly became cumbersome; in time, imperial coursts became semipermanent, then permanent.

In 710, during the reign of Empress Genmyō (Genmei, 660–721), Nara (Heijō-kyō, Capital of the Peaceful Citadel) became an influential capital city for imperial courts. Rather than defer to concerns over death and pollution, selection of the site for the Capital of the Peaceful Citadel in large part was based on then-favorable aspects of the surrounding area, in particular, the sensory delights afforded to people of privilege through aesthetic experiences of the Yamato Plain.

Nara (Level Land), though, increasingly became subject to periodic flooding as the imperial city had been sited near the Saho and Tomio rivers. Aesthetic enjoyment of the area around Nara did not offset the growing belief that the land itself was failing to influence the well-being of emperors, the city, and its people.

Virtue and the Breath of Life

Changing conceptions of and attitudes toward the land and landscape around Nara influenced temporary relocation of the imperial capital, in 784, to Nagaoka. In 794, Emperor Kanmu (737–806) ordered the imperial capital moved from Nara to a new site that became known as the Capital of Peace and Tranquillity (Kyōto).

The land on which Kyōto was sited had been donated to Emperor Kanmu by the Hata family, wealthy descendants of immigrants from Korea. Kyōto was believed to be free of the malevolent influences causing undesirable environmental changes within areas in and around Nara. At this time, nature (自然, shizen) was believed to embody animistic qualities demonstrably affecting people—land and human-created landscapes were auspicious, or not, and favorably influenced well-being, or not. People of influence felt that the site and topography of Nara were not balancing wind and water, but increasingly favored water. They believed that the area north of Nara better balanced wind and water.¹

Principles and practices for enhancing aspects of nature deemed beneficent were known as Storing Wind/Acquiring Water (蔵風得水, zōfū tokushi), which coexisted with imported Chinese feng shui principles and practices of Wind/Water.²

Feng shui animistically conceived of the earth as an organic body laced with arterial veins through which the Breath of Life (qi; 気, ki in Japan) flowed. The Breath of Life flowed and circulated more intensely in some spaces and places more than in others. Well-being was enhanced through detecting intensive flows of the Breath of Life embodied as distinctive features of the land itself, then through fashioning habitats congruent with the flow of the Breath of Life. By the ninth century, the rudiments of feng shui were present in Japan; indeed, “the senior Ministry of State, the Nakatsukasa, included a special department, the Onmyō-Ryō (陰陽寮, Bureau of Yin-Yang), with a select staff of masters and doctors of divination and astrology.”³ The Chinese Southern Sung Dynasty (1127–1279) was a period of comparatively intense exchange between China and Japan, and “it was not until the rise of the Sung Dynasty that all the elements of feng shui gathered into one system.”⁴ During the later Southern Sung Dynasty, Buddhist priests from China studied in Japan and Buddhist priests from Japan studied in China. The Ajari, for instance, were Japanese Buddhist specialists in Chinese yin yang (陰陽, in yō in Japan).

Congruent with Chinese feng shui, Japanese zōfū tokushi emphasized the conjoining of aspects of nature and specific directions. South was considered a beneficent direction while north was the least propitious direction. East was associated with dragons and water while west was associated with tigers and mountains. In an ideal site for human habitation, enhancing well-being, “mountains come from behind, which is to say from the north, and end at this point [the site selected], overlooked a plain ahead. On the left and right, mountain ranges extend southward to protect the area; they are known as the ‘undulations of the green dragon’ and the ‘deferential bowing of the white tiger.’ To the south are spreading flatlands or low hills. As a rule, water from the mountains flows down through the area bounded by them. In short, there are mountains behind and a plain with flowing water in front. Such a location is suitable for zōfū tokushi conditions.”⁵ Selection of the site on which Kyōto was constructed acknowledged the influence of nature on the well-being of people, in particular the influence of a favorable balancing of mountains and water.

Favorably open toward the south, Kyōto was laid out on a plain between auspicious aspects of nature to the north, east, and west.⁶With protecting hills and mountains to the north, east, and west, Kyōto was sited within a beneficent space between tiger (west) and the dragon (east) mountains.

Kyōto was sited with respect to the Katsura River and the Kamo River, both of which flowed auspiciously toward the south into low-lying basins fed by numerous springs flowing down from surrounding mountains. Interestingly, “the mountains surrounding the City of Purple Mountains and Crystal Streams [Kyōto] were considered ‘male [in],’ and … along the foot of the eastern hills flowed the Kamo River, which curved around at the south, again as topographical tradition demanded; the Katsura River to the west of the city provided the second of the two essential ‘female [yō]’ elements.”⁷ Kyōto was auspiciously sited within a low-lying basin surrounded on three sides by mountains with the fourth side, the south side, open to the flowing waters of rivers, a siting believed to enhance the well-being of the city and its inhabitants (figs. 2, 30).

FIGURE 30. The city of Kyōto was sited within a basin surrounded, and balanced, by (tiger) mountains to the west and (dragon) mountains to the east. Tenryū-ji (toward where the arrow is pointing), a dragon presence, subsequently was sited within, and balanced by, the tiger-mountains to the west of the city.

Kyōto also was known as the City of Purple Hills and Crystal Streams (山紫水明, Sanshi Suimei, Place of Great Natural Beauty). This poetic name signified the manner in which the new imperial capital interwove the city proper with aspects of nature, in particular mountains and water. “The capital [Kyōto] itself was situated in beautiful country, encircled on three sides by thickly forested hills and mountains, often delicately wreathed with trails of mist; in the autumn evenings one could hear the deer’s cry in the distance, and the desolate call of the wild geese overhead; the landscape abounded in streams and waterfalls and lakes; and into its green slopes and valleys the countless shrines and monasteries blended as if they too had become a part of nature.”⁸ Here, a human-created landscape was experienced as an intimate aspect of nature, similar to a forthcoming chapter’s narratives on people’s early experiences of the landscape of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon as nature.⁹ In the section “Revealing the Nature of Buddha-Nature,” for instance, we will see that in the fourteeenth century the landscape of the temple included features such as a Dragon-Gate Pavilion, the fabled Moon-Crossing Bridge, and a shrine evocatively renamed Buddha’s Light of the World—architectured features placed in nature some distance from the central areas of the temple.

Wind circulates the Breath of Life. Water embraces the Breath of Life. “The ch’i, the cosmic breaths which constitute the virtue of a site, are blown about by the wind and held by the waters.”¹⁰ A circulating balance of wind and water was believed not only to be auspicious, beneficent, but to be virtuous as well.

The Temple of the Heavenly Dragon, much later, will be sited within a balanced, auspicious confluence of low-lying bodies of water nestled within encircling mountains (fig. 5). Locating the temple amid mountains and water long associated with well-being by contagious contact was believed to enhance the moral character and mission of the complex. The temple was considered a repository of virtue, as we will see, an especially beneficent place for the living as well as for the deceased.

A Most Beautiful Meadow

After the capital had been relocated from Nara to Kyōto, a succession of emperors and aristocrats began to find favor with Sagano (Saga), a lush region within the mountains west of Kyōto, for the location of compounds built as retreats from the city (fig. 2). Sagano was praised as “the best meadow of all, no doubt because of its beauty as a landscape.”¹¹ Ōigawa (the Abundant-Flowing River), merging with the Katsura River, flowed through Sagano. The Mountain of Storms lay to the west/southwest of the river while Turtle Mountain and the plains of Sagano lay to the north/northeast of the river.

Emperors and aristocrats began to designate Sagano a protected reserve for hunting, excursions, and retreats from Kyōto. Emperor Saga, for instance, so loved Sagano that he took his name from that region. His love for the mountains and plains west of Kyōto later will be shared by Go-Daigo (1288–1339), one of his descendants who will participate directly in the genesis of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon.

The Sagano region of western Kyōto became important to practitioners of Shintō as well as to the early presence of Buddhism in Japan. In addition to the pleasure retreats of emperors and the nobility, the human-created landscape in Sagano began to exhibit compounds physically marking the presence of Buddhism and Shintō.

A Palace-in-the-Field

The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari), most likely written from about 1008 through 1021 by Lady Murasaki Shikibu (ca. 973–1025), provides an early glimpse of the region of Sagano. The Tale of Genji contains vivid descriptions of people and events associated with rites of purification critical to the venerated Grand Shrine at Ise (present-day Mie Prefecture, southeast of Kyōto).¹²

In the Tale of Genji, compounds termed “Palace-in-the-Field” were built in Sagano as secluded settings for princesses, high priestesses, from the family of an emperor. Prior to representing an emperor at Ise, a priestess was required to live for a year within a Palace-in-the-Field while undergoing rites of purification.¹³ Priestesses were purified in the flowing waters of the Katsura River prior to being escorted to Ise.¹⁴ After a priestess had been escorted to Ise, the compound associated with her purification was dismantled. A new compound was constructed each time a priestess was prepared to represent an emperor by living at Ise.

To our eyes, though, the word “palace” misdescribes the compounds built within Sagano. Consider the manner in which the Tale of Genji describes Prince Genji’s approach to a Palace-in-the-Field: “They came at last,” Lady Murasaki writes, “to a group of very temporary wooden huts surrounded by a flimsy brushwood fence. The archways, built of unstripped wood, stood solemnly against the sky. Within the enclosure a number of priests were walking up and down with a preoccupied air.”¹⁵ Prince Genji steals into the compound to secret a love note to Lady Rokujō, of the imperial court, whose daughter (Akikonomu) was being prepared to live within the Grand Shrine at Ise. The area described here was set apart, isolated spatially, and was entered through “archways” (鳥居, torii) still signaling spaces and places associated with Shintō.

Prince Genji, we read, then entered an enchanted garden within the Palace-in-the-Field. Having secreted his note to Lady Rokujō, Prince Genji lingers in contemplating how “the garden which surrounded her apartments was laid out in so enchanting a manner that the troops of young courtiers, who in the early days of the retreat had sought in vain to press their attentions upon her, used, even when she had sent them about their business, to linger there regretfully; and on this marvelous night the place seemed consciously to be deploying all its charm.”¹⁶ A striking aspect of this garden is its animistic quality and presence. The garden enchants, casts a spell, and the spell of the garden is so compelling as to force the gaze of courtiers away from the handsome Rokujō. As in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, the enchantment of the garden weaves its spell most charmingly at night, in moonlight (fig. 125).

FIGURE 31. Shrine buildings peek through dense groves of tall bamboo-grass, framing the walkway to the central area of the present-day Shrine-in-the-Field (Nonomiya).

At this time, a garden was a vital component of compounds such as the Palace-in-the-Field in Sagano. The word niwa (庭, garden) at the time defined a purified area into which kami (神) were invited, venerated, and/or housed. “Garden” was an animistic, spiritual concept as well as aesthetic landscape. The Tale of Genji brings Sagano to life as a region saturated with what we would recognize as religious belief and practice. To this day Sagano remains associated with purification, divinity, and spiritual renewal.

The present-day Shintō shrine of Nonomiya (Shrine-in-the-Field) is to the north and within sight of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon. Nonomiya is descended from the Sagano compounds to which imperial princesses came to be purified (figs. 31, 32).

This contemporary version of the Shrine-in-the-Field often appears in the landscape of contemporary fiction. In The_Makioka Sisters, by Jūnichirō Tanizaki, we accompany a newly married couple to the area around the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon where “a chilly wind had come up by the time they passed the Nonomiya, the Shrine-in-the-Field, where in ancient times court maidens retired for purification before leaving to become Shrine Virgins at Ise.”¹⁷ Nonomiya still is considered an especially generative place to petition kami for happy marriages, healthy children, and the like. Nonomiya is swaddled in lush groves of bamboo and brushwood, similar to the foliage surrounding the Palace-in-the-Field described within the Tale of Genji. A winding path of gravel cushions the walk to the central area of the shrine. The surrounding foliage through which one passes is a tunnel of verdant green, punctuated by golden shafts of light. Nonomiya is entered through and under torii. The shrine still retains the seclusion and aura of sacredness of the Palace-in-the-Field in the Tale of Genji.

The Empress and the Priest

In addition to Shintō, the Sagano region west of Kyōto was significant to the early presence of Buddhism in Japan. In this regard, the present-day temple of Danrin-ji (Forest Temple) is important historically.

In 836 Tachibana no Kachiko ordered the construction of a small complex, initially a nunnery with about twelve subtemple buildings, to be constructed within Sagano. She was keenly interested in the Buddhism of China. She had sent an invitation to I-k’ung (Gikū Zenshi, as he came to be known in Japan), a Rinzai priest, asking him to travel to Sagano to instruct her in Chinese Zen Buddhism. Gikū Zenshi accepted her invitation, and the Forest Temple was built as a residence and teaching arena for him. In 1191, 355 years later, Myōan Eisai (Zenkō Kokushi, 1141–1215) would institutionalize the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism in Japan.

During the time of Tachibana no Kachiko, though, Chinese Zen Buddhism was not widely received in Japan. Disillusioned, Gikū Zenshi subsequently returned to China. The teachings, the way of life, of Gikū Zenshi nonetheless profoundly affected Tachibana no Kachiko. She shaved her head, and began living as a Buddhist priest.¹⁸

FIGURE 32. The entrance into the central area of the present-day Shrine-in-the- Field (Nonomiya).

Buddhism was present in Japan during the time of Empress Genmyō and Lady Tachibana. The word “Shintō” (神道, Way of the Kami) had begun to appear around the seventh century, in large part to name indigenous belief distinct from the growing influence of Buddhism in Japan.

The historical Buddha was born Siddhārtha Gautama in 563 B.C. in Nepal. Siddhārtha (“He Whose Aim Is Accomplished”) experienced existence-as-it-is (真如, shinnyo; tathatā, in Sanskrit), then chose to reveal the nature of existence (Dharma), to others. The belief is that “one who really knows truth, lives the life of truth, becomes the truth itself. This was realized in the person of Buddha (literally, “One Who is Enlightened about Ultimate Reality”).”¹⁹ Upon his awareness of the Truth of existence, Siddhārtha subsequently became known as Shākyamuni (the Sage of the Shākyas—Shākya being the name of his family of birth; fig. 33).

FIGURE 33. Sculpture of Siddhārtha Gautama (Shākyamuni). First century A.D., sandstone, Mathura, India. H: 23 cm.

A principal concern of Buddhism is the suffering of people as well as the suffering of non-human life (Four Noble Truths). The belief continues to be that suffering in large part lives within conceptions of ego-consciousness-as-reality—the belief that “self” is a distinct, autonomous phenomenon. A Truth apprehended by Shākyamuni was that “self,” ego-consciousness-as-reality, is an illusion giving life and power to suffering; one has an “Original Face”; every person already has Buddha-Nature, of which Shākyamuni became aware (“enlightenment”) while sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree. Awareness of the fundamental reality of Buddha-Nature is the experience of existence-as-it-is, “enduring, permanent, a secure shelter, unassailable bliss. It is the supreme Truth and Reality … a state of neither being nor non-being.”²⁰ Awareness of Buddha-Nature is said to be clouded by fear, pain, desire, and other misery-inducing illusions of life. Upon relinquishment of ego-consciousness-as-reality, “one’s ordinary personality is transcended and becomes an embodiment of Truth.”²¹The Truth experienced by Shākyamuni was a way to end, in this life, the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara).

Buddhism arose amid the Vedic system of varna in India where low-caste and outcaste persons were considered closer to animals than to people. Shākyamuni on the other hand held that all beings, “animal” as well as “human,” inherently possessed Buddha-Nature. “Whether he is tall, average or short …, whether he is black, brown, or yellow,” a Truth experienced by Shākyamuni was that all persons in their lifetimes can experience an end to suffering.²² Shākyamuni presented to people a Middle Way (Eight-Fold Path) between the asceticism he experienced while living among forest and mountain-dwelling yogi in India and the indulgences and excesses of daily life he experienced before leaving the gates of his father’s extensive palace.

Gikū Zenshi presented Tachibana no Kachiko with a then fairly new practice of Buddhism. He taught her the Way of Zen (禅那, Zenna), from China.

Buddhism from India melded with the Daoism of China to form Zen Buddhism, which then passed to Japan. In the Dao de Jing, attributed to Laozi (ca. 500 B.C.), Daoism conceptualized nature as a Way, a way of Being, that humans ought to emulate. Daoists sought to live naturally, to be “supple and pliant like ice about to melt; genuine, like a piece of uncarved wood; open and broad, like a valley.”²³ Nature thus was a vital aspect of the Zen practice of Buddhism passing from China to Japan.

Zen Buddhism held that experience of Buddha-Nature could occur suddenly in one’s lifetime, as “the immediate expression and actualization of the perfection present in every person at every moment.”²⁴ Such awareness was not something for which one ought to strive, for “life is impermanent … Do not wait another moment to practice the Way. Strive not to fruitlessly pass this very moment.”²⁵Emphasis on the unfettered experience of existence-as-it-is meant that, from moment to moment, Zen Buddhism was “an absolutely pure exercise from which nothing is sought and nothing is gained.”²⁶When experienced, the Truth of Shākyamuni was said often to occur spontaneously as one’s moment-to-moment awareness of one’s inherent Buddha-Nature.

Tachibana no Kachiko and Gikū Zenshi met together as student and enlightened teacher (rōshi). The still-communal nature of Buddhism early on is present in this intimate student-teacher relationship. Tachibana no Kachiko defined a religious landscape in Sagano by constructing a family-temple complex as a sangha —an ongoing Buddhist community of believers. A sangha was one of the Three Baskets of Shākyamuni to which followers were admonished to adhere.²⁷ A connotation of sangha was “the whole universe transformed into a spiritual community of Buddhas and Buddhas-to-be, in terms covering past, present, and future, and in terms of space extending in all directions.”²⁸ As a Buddhist community of believers, a temple was both visible (present adherents) and invisible (past and future adherents).

Accompanying her intensive study of Zen Buddhism within Danrin-ji, Tachibana no Kachiko became known as Danrin. By 850, the year of her death, she had established a school at Danrin-ji for successive generations of the Tachibana family who were expected to study Buddhism and Zen within the compound. The Tachibana clan of families, though, eventually was eclipsed in power by a branch of the Fujiwara clan of families. After the passing of the Saga emperorship, Danrin-ji suffered neglect and lapsed into ruin.²⁹

A Grass House and the Shadow of Mountains

In 975, Prince Kaneakira traveled into the region of the Mountain of Storms west of Kyōto to pay homage to the “spirit” of Turtle Mountain. “I wished to retire the bureaucratic world to have a rest,” he wrote, “and to end my life at a quiet place at the foot of Kameyama [Turtle Mountain].”³⁰ Descriptions of the habitat constructed by the prince are sparse, but the compound apparently was small in size, what we might term rustic. As the prince wrote, “I had my grass-house built … at last.”³¹ Mirei Shigemori tells us “the mountain villa and the garden which stood near Mount Kameyama had a gate [torii] and bamboo fence and had woods in front and a bamboo grove behind. The mountain villa and the garden were very beautiful in every season.”³² The “house of grass” most likely was constructed from bamboo and thatch. Surrounding stands of bamboo perhaps stimulated Prince Kaneakira to experience poetically the area around Turtle Mountain as beautiful aurally as well as visually. Sound is prominent in the experience of bamboo grass. Amplified by hollow trunks, a variety of tones are produced when stalks move against each other in the wind. Extensive fields of bamboo surrounded the garden in the Tale of Genji, within the Shrine-in-the-Field (Nonomiya), and extensive fields of bamboo still are present within the landscape aspect of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon.

The entrance to the prince’s compound was marked by “archways,” as they are termed in his writings (recall the “archways”(torii) through which Prince Genji passed upon entering the Shrine-in-the-Field in Sagano). Prince Kaneakira also constructed a modest building, the Shrine of Perfect Virtue, within his compound. Prince Kaneakira did not impose himself on nature but instead “asked” if he could cohabit, as it were, with the spirit (霊, rei) of Turtle Mountain—a place of felt beauty and tranquillity. The prince honored Turtle Mountain as a distinct animistic presence (存在, sonzai) by petitioning to form a relationship with the mountain as he similarly might petition to form a relationship with a person of high status.

Prince Kaneakira’s conception of and behavior toward Turtle Mountain was consistent with early Shintō conceptions of and behaviors toward nature. The prince visualized Turtle Mountain as the embodiment, the materialization, of a deity (甘南備山, the mountain as kannabiyama).³³

Kameyama “means Tortoise Hill and, as the name implies, the hill is rather low and in the shape of a tortoise.”³⁴ As a learned man, Prince Kaneakira undoubtedly was aware of isomorphic correspondences between the shape of turtles and the shape of the land, as turtles long had been vital to divination both in early China and Japan (see pp. 197–210). Perhaps Prince Kaneakira in part chose to site his retirement lodge on the piedmont of Turtle Mountain to share in, through the contagious contact of direct participation, the well-being ascribed to turtleness via the distinctive shape of the mountain.

The kami of Shintō at the time in part were experienced through affecting, emotional responses to nature-as-kami, as kami were ascribed authority by virtue of their ability to affect people via their felt presence.³⁵ Shapes and physical features of nature were believed to be embodiments of kami—kami were trees and wind … and water.³⁶ We read that Prince Kaneakira beseeched Turtle Mountain to usher forth water, to nourish the human-made garden aspect of the compound and “we learn from his poem in praise of the god of Kame-yama that his garden had a pond fed by water from a spring on the hill.”³⁷ Kami were the generativity and vitality of life itself. The kami of a site were known and felt through the fecundity of the site and belief in kami conditioned one to visualize the land as animated. Vital.

The “grass house” and compound of Prince Kaneakira became well known among aristocrats in Kyōto for the affecting beauty of its landscape and surrounding lands. The prince was privileged by birth, “excelled in scholarship, achieved considerable mastery in literature and calligraphy, and is represented by poems in several extant anthologies.”³⁸ Prince Kaneakira was renowned for his accomplishments in poetry, stimulated no doubt by the land and human-created landscape near Turtle Mountain to which he sought retirement—for peace of mind and heart.

Prince Kaneakira passed away in 987. The buildings and pond in the shadow of Turtle Mountain lay abandoned for several hundred years until Emperor Go-Saga began to incorporate aspects of the then-desiccated compound into his imperial villa.

A Taste Quite Elegant

The Turtle Mountain Villa on the Banks of the Rising River (Kameyama Dono) was constructed around 1255 under the guidance of Tachibana Tomoshige, a magistrate in the court of Emperor Go-Saga. Tachibana Tomoshige no doubt felt kinship with the area west of Kyōto through family ancestry traced to Tachibana no Kachiko. The emperor maintained a primary residence in the Imperial Palace in Kyōto. The Turtle Mountain Villa was a detached palace (rikyū) for prolonged retreats, and also was intended as the future retirement residence of the emperor.

FIGURE 34. An interpretative sketch of a Sleeping-Hall Compound (shinden zukuri style).

Detached palaces were constructed around several interconnected buildings, a style of architecture (shinden zukuri; literally, Sleeping Hall Building) patterned after imperial palaces in T’ang Dynasty (618–907) China. Buildings were laid out and interconnected in a U-shape; to protect high-status occupants, buildings were linked by roofed corridors elevated off the ground (figs. 34, 35).

Detached palaces, though, “lacked the most elementary comforts of life. Winter was extremely cold in the basin formed by the plain of Kyōto. For all that, the emperor had nothing to warm himself but a simple brazier [and elaborate, layered clothing] … He remained nearly all day seated on a thick straw cushion covered with woven grass, sheltered alike from observations and insidious draughts by screens of wooden lattice … The only light he had [apart from natural light] came from lamps. There was little or no furniture—just a few chests. Summer time … was more bearable … It was quite cool in the palace but it was very dark inside, a place of perpetual twilight.”³⁹ To our eyes, imperial retreats undoubtedly would appear spartan and rustic.

FIGURE 35. Covered walkways still link several buildings within the present-day Temple of the Heavenly Dragon. The walkways preserve the influence of Heian-period (794–1185) shinden zukuri architecture on the design of the temple.

Tachibana Tomoshige and Go-Saga designed and oversaw construction of the landscape aspect of the villa. Emperor Go-Saga possessed a keen aesthetic sensibility, and quite elegant tastes. The villa was constructed near the Ōi River. The river was to the south, with mountains in the background—“a place of great scenic beauty … which gave the appearance of a mountain village.”⁴⁰ Remnants of Prince Kaneakira’s cottage were to the east of the villa.

As will be the case later with the layout of Tenryū-ji, here Tachibana and Go-Saga incorporated aspects of previous habitats into the design of the compound. Rather than the spiritual sensibilities of Tachibana no Kachiko and Prince Kaneakira, though, the human-constructed landscape of the imperial villa at Turtle Mountain privileged Go-Saga’s aesthetic sensitivity to nature.

Eternity, and a Palace Pond

There was an extensive pond garden within Go-Saga’s imperial villa at Turtle Mountain. Despite the careful selection of the site, water shortages at the time were endemic within the basin where Kyōto was located (opposite, interestingly, of the flooding in Nara). One account from this period reveals “a terrible drought dried up the earth … where the young green shoots were wont to grow. The fields overflowed with the bodies of those who starved.”⁴¹ Possession of a well-maintained pond of water must have been a welcome, yet privileged, experience.

Construction of Go-Saga’s pond garden required solving several problems, as the emperor’s detached palace was sited on ground somewhat higher than the nearby Ōi River. A waterwheel initially was fashioned to bring water from the river into the villa. Lower-caste people forced to live along the banks of nearby rivers were conscripted to construct the waterwheel but, not being specialists, the waterwheel was not well engineered and did not function properly. Subsequently, craftsmen from the village of Uji, south of Kyōto, were conscripted to rebuild the waterwheel, which then functioned properly. The bed for the garden pond was excavated then lined with clay, to better retain water in the pond (remnants of the clay at the bottom of the pond in the emperor’s detached palace are held to still be present at the bottom of the pond within the present-day Temple of the Heavenly Dragon).⁴²

Go-Saga’s pond garden “did not adjourn the house, rather did the house form an integral part of the garden … the dwelling place begins in the garden.”⁴³ Buildings and the pond garden aspect of the detached palace were interrelated architecturally, yet the garden was the privileged aspect of the compound.

Two smaller buildings flanked a larger central building, and long corridors were placed at right angles at each end of the flanking buildings. Pavilions were built at the ends of the corridors, extending out and over the water of the pond, such that one could walk the corridor and remain sheltered yet still be surrounded by water (fig. 34).

The manner in which Go-Saga’s detached palace interrelated buildings, nature, and the human-created landscape was quite subtle. A small branching stream (yarimizu), fed by higher mountain water, was channeled under the corridors and floors of buildings then into the garden pond and “care was given to such details as the foaming and gurgling of the water as it dashed against the stones … lining the small stream.”⁴⁴ Wooden planks served as the floor. People could remove the planks, perhaps merely to experience the murmuring of water streaming underneath the buildings.

In 1276, a visitor experiencing the pond garden wrote of experiencing “eternity, and the pine trees on Tortoise Hill [Kameyama] reflected in the clear waters of the palace pond.”⁴⁵ At night, boating parties often were held on the pond in the garden. The Mirror of Increase (Masukagami) says “at that time, they floated a boat on the pond and performed Bugaku [a courtly dance, and associated music], and so on.”⁴⁶ When retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa (1243–1304) visited the villa on May 10, 1261, “a temporary pavilion was erected on the islet. The emperors sat under the pavilion, enjoying a feeling of being in the pond and on land at the same time.”⁴⁷ Musicians performed and people danced. Music wafted in the air, as flowers were strewn on the pond.

Go-Saga was an accomplished poet. Boating parties were settings for “Battle of the Seasons” contests in which guests composed poems extolling the felt qualities of each season. People “called to imperial poetry contests on moonlit nights and snowy mornings” boated on the nearby Ōi River while composing poems by torchlight, an indication that the river at this time was a vital aspect of the villa’s garden landscape.⁴⁸

The Fragrant Spirit of Trees

Go-Saga further defined a fairly permanent aspect of the landscape in the area through the planting of myriad cherry trees around the imperial villa beneath Turtle Mountain. Cherry trees were transplanted from the legendary Yoshino region south of Kyōto. The mountain area of Yoshino (Fields of Good Fortune) was known as Fragrant Mountain and Beloved Fields. Yoshino remains a venerated, sacred mountain area.

Cherry trees are wonderfully fragrant, and visually arresting. In bloom, the cherry trees of Yoshino sprout fragrant blossoms primarily in subtle shades of pink. Shortly after vibrantly bursting forth in the spring, blossoms fade to white then drop, swirling, to blanket the ground. People still graft feelings of transience and impermanence (無常, mujō) onto the fleeting life of blossoms falling from cherry trees, and “the sad fleeting quality of the moment [物の哀れ, mono no aware] is savored just as fully as the moment itself.”⁴⁹ It is said that veneration of blooming cherry blossoms “derives from the idea of the bud where the divine spirit is closeted until the tip bursts and blossoms.”⁵⁰ Divine Spirit. Kami.

The Mirror of Increase tells us “in this spring the Emperor came to this Detached Palace [the villa] and enjoyed seeing cherry blossoms.”⁵¹ One can only imagine the sight and fragrance of myriad cherry trees in bloom on the slopes of the mountains of Sagano. It was said that the cherry trees transplanted from Yoshino added to the “fragrance of the spirit” of the emperor’s villa.⁵² After Go-Saga’s retirement as emperor in 1246, Go-Uda (1267–1324) ordered the additional planting of several thousand cherry trees from Yoshino onto the slopes of the nearby Mountain of Storms.

Emperors Go-Saga and Go-Uda ordered the transplanting of trees for purposes aesthetic and ornamental, as there is no evidence that the cherry trees were cultivated for their fruit. Alteration of the land surrounding the imperial villa emphasized aesthetics and the sensory, affective pleasure attendant upon a primarily visual experience of the landscape.

We have noted the increasing energy invested in the location and construction of buildings, as well as physical alterations of the land west of the City of Purple Hills and Crystal Streams, in the fashioning of an affecting human-created landscape. Three people of influence initially defined the character of the land and landscape west of Kyōto within which the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon will emerge. Tachibana no Kachiko ordered construction of a sangha, supporting the early presence of Chinese Zen Buddhism in Japan. Prince Kaneakira subsequently constructed a complex with Shintō-inspired features such as torii, waterways, extensive stands of bamboo, and the Shrine of Perfect Virtue. Emperor Go-Saga initiated construction of an elaborate settlement in Sagano, and altered the land through the planting of trees as well as the construction of a comparatively large pond garden. Go-Saga also altered the Ōi River to direct water into his villa and under and through several of its buildings. The affecting presence of cherry trees transplanted from Yoshino in particular was a profound alteration of the land and resulted in a lasting dramatic impact upon the visual landscape.

These alterations of the land, the defining of a human-created landscape, were cumulative in their effects and affects. Each alteration contributed to the character of the later landscape within which the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon will emerge.

The significance (religious significance, for the most part) of the land itself will be ongoing. The sensate colors and textures of the human-created visual landscape also will continue aesthetically and emotionally to touch those privileged to experience the region west of the City of Purple Hills and Crystal Streams.