has logical, economic, and esthetic unity, if it still lacks a spiritual unity, it has not achieved its final and best purpose. This is the unity which ties the building to its natural environment, and then links the people who live there to both. It means that in the course of living in our house and garden we become a part of it, and it a part of us. This is the unique quality, the ideal of a Japanese garden.
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
