Japanese Gardens for today. David Engel
is that, while the material advantages and luxuries produced by modern technology encompass us and touch all aspects of our lives, we have had the uneasy feeling of being uprooted, of losing contact with nature, of "getting soft." We cannot stem the tide of technology—and perhaps do not even want to. Yet, almost instinctively feeling the need to put down roots in a natural setting, we have moved to Suburbia and beyond to Exurbia. Architects, both of houses and of gardens, have recognized the extent and depth of the necessity to "get back to nature." Witness the contemporary design of homes and gardens which are built for so-called "indoor-outdoor living."
We may at times succeed in the attempt at integrating house and garden, hoping thereby to achieve a kind of harmonious relationship with nature. More often, however, we have missed the point because of our reliance upon a narrowly materialistic, functional approach. It is at that point that we can learn from the Japanese.
Living close to nature is the very essence of life in Japan. The Japanese makes little distinction between nature and deity. His house and garden then seem the perfect cradle, for there he feels closer to his God. House and garden represent the happy marriage of art and nature, and one can barely distinguish a dividing line at which the house ends and the garden begins.
When the concept of the thin line that separates architecture and nature is discussed outside of Japan the point is often raised that the especially close relationship between house and garden might be all very well for Japan. "But," it is asked, "are Japanese gardens functional in America, in Europe? They may work under Japanese conditions but can their principles be applied outside japan?"
The answer is that, of course, no one advocates merely copying the Japanese garden. What is proposed is simply that we understand the principles of its design, its handling of materials, and, above all, its spirit. Once having grasped these essentials, we may proceed to plan a garden, adapting the sense and spirit of Japanese design to the material and physical requirements and limitations of the project.
Indeed, the concept of functionalism has a spiritual as well as a material aspect. Though in recent times it has become a cliche in our daily life, functionalism certainly is neither a new discovery nor does the term indicate an advanced mode of living. It is true, of course, that all that functions in a Japanese setting may not necessarily work favorably outside of Japan. Yet the West, which has become so engrossed in the material aspects of "functional living," may well profit from an appreciation of what a functional garden means to a Japanese. A simple garden of a Japanese home from which the members of the family derive pleasure as they view it through each season of the year surely serves some functional purpose (see, for example, the gardens of Plates 1, 35, 37, 51 and 56). To be sure, the garden has no barbecue grill, swimming pool, or play area, but it does convey, past the open, paper-panelled shoji and across the grass mat tatami threshold, a sense of repose and identification with nature's own harmony. Could not an Occidental garden inducing the same effect also be considered functional? This, of course, is not to say that the way to mental health or peace of mind and soul leads necessarily through a Japanese garden. But rather I suggest only that the meditative, receptive element be recognized as most desirable and that it be combined in appropriate proportions with active, exertive enjoyment of a garden.
The organic form of a Japanese garden, as of a Western garden, depends upon the basic type of building it is designed for—a small private house in town, a hotel or inn, a teahouse, a restaurant, a large country villa, a mansion, palace, or temple. Styles reflect individual taste, local tradition, foreign influences, and changes in the economic and social structure of Japanese society. But despite differences in form and style a good Japanese garden invariably reveals three fundamental characteristics: naturalism, asymmetry, and a drawing together of natural and architectural forms into a unified, harmonious composition. It is a work of art, built on a human scale, naturalistic in content but subjective in spirit.
Color Plate 1. A pond often forms a central element of Japanese garden design. In the pond seen here, the water level has dropped ten inches, temporarily revealing the rocky shoreline that is normally under water (see Color Plate 12). Each rock rests on its own rock piling sunk into the clayey bank. The low shoreline and peninsula in the foreground has a sunken rock bed over which are laid small rounded black stones. Note how the rocks are arranged as promontories and inlets of a real ocean shoreline, some jutting out into the water and some receding into coves. (Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto.)
Color Plate 2. A view of the type of pond called shinji-ike, i.e., a pond in the form of the Chinese character shin, meaning "heart, soul, spirit," a favorite character with the Zen sect of Buddhism. The light filtering through the trees and the softness of the moss-covered earth invite meditation. This garden is the work of Muso Kokushi, a famous Zen priest of the fourteenth century. (Saiho-ji, Kyoto.)
Conscious and keen observation and appreciation of wild nature inspires the creator of a Japanese garden. In executing his design, however, the raw forms of nature are symbolized, suggested, implied. The garden-maker's objective is to humanize the natural landscape immediately around him, not to force it into a strait-jacket of bilateral symmetry; he aims, with artistry and discrimination, to select out of nature those elements that he feels are most perfect and pertinent to his composition. This is what is meant when it is said that the Japanese garden is subjective in spirit.
The materials of the Japanese garden are selected to bring the timelessness and solidity of the world of nature into a garden. Thus, lasting elements such as rock, gravel, sand, and evergreen trees and shrubs are predominant, while fleeting blossoms and color play the counterpoint. This has been a distinctive attribute of Japanese gardens for eight centuries, ever since the Kamakura period, when Zen Buddhist meditation, though demanding freedom from the world's bright, gaudy distractions, still insisted upon a feeling for the world. Under such conditions the garden became an idealization of nature in which could be discovered something of the heart of nature, of its very elemental spirit. It was designed so that the beholder could relate himself to nature. By discovering in it something of ordinary human experience he felt drawn into the garden and even a part of it. This very subjective experience is an expression of the all-embracing Buddhist concept of the oneness, the unity of all things under Heaven.
Such feeling bears little relation to certain popular notions of Japanese gardens flourishing outside Japan. These stereotypes have been propagated and nourished by three generations of visitors, who, over the past one hundred years, have periodically "discovered" Japan. In the big cities these visitors may catch a glimpse of gardens of teahouses and restaurants in all their overdone, cluttered ornamentation. From this fleeting contact they believe the Japanese garden to be a quaint, tinkling medley of little arched bridges, carp ponds, paper lanterns, oddly pruned trees, bamboo blinds, grotesquely jutting rocks, and perhaps a dainty geisha. Other travelers, who barely get beyond Tokyo's Imperial Hotel lobby and gift shops, have conceived of the Japanese garden to have something to do with dwarfed plants and the miniatures of a tray landscape. Many visitors, of course, do make the regular tours of Nikko, Kyoto, and Nara to view those cities' celebrated temples, shrines, palaces, and gardens. They may see famous feudal-period gardens, built on a grand scale, of imposing richness and intricate detail. But many of these are also sadly artificial and sterile, having no relationship to the life of the common man, devoid of the bright buoyancy of nature. Visitors to these places come away convinced that Japanese gardens must be filled with giant stone lanterns and great rocks and boulders.
The problem is that, even with only superficial contact with Japanese gardens, the outsider is bound to form an opinion of garden art in Japan. The average traveler, unfortunately, sees nothing but the external decorative elements. He has not had the chance to see either simple, well-designed, modern home gardens or very old ones made in the earlier and more creative periods of Japanese garden art. Diverted by exotic and romantic elements, most visitors to Japan have missed the real point of a Japanese garden. It surely is not merely a matter of using rocks, pebbles, unpainted wood surfaces, Japanese maples, twisted pines, rocky pools, waterfalls, garden rills, bridges, pagodas, stone lanterns, or Buddhas.