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A garden that seeks to re-create nature on a small garden-sized scale. Through its maker's choice and placement of plants, it is meant to suggest the wildness of nature, a sense of motion, and the passage of time. Japanese gardens usually incorporate Shinto or Zen elements as well.
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Japanese gardens (Kanji 日本庭園, nihon teien), that is, gardens in traditional Japanese style, can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, at Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines, and at historical landmarks such as old castles.
Many of the Japanese gardens most famous in the West, and within Japan as well, are dry gardens or rock gardens, karesansui. The tradition of the Tea masters has produced highly refined Japanese gardens of quite another style, evoking rural simplicity. In Japanese culture, garden-making is a high art, intimately related to the linked arts of calligraphy and ink painting. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese gardens have also been imitated in Western gardening.
The tradition of Japanese gardening was passed down from sensei to apprentice, in a rigorous apprenticeship that has remained unbroken since the fifteenth century. The opening words of Zōen's Illustrations for designing mountain, water and hillside field landscapes (1466) are "If you have not received the oral transmissions, you must not make gardens" and its closing admonition is "You must never show this writing to outsiders. You must keep it secret".[1]
Influenced by Chinese gardens, a catalogue of features "typical" of the Japanese garden may be drawn up without inquiring deeply into the aesthetic underlying Japanese practice. Typical Japanese gardens contain several of these elements:
Shakkei (借景), "borrowed scenery," is a technique used to integrate the garden with mountains, buildings, or other objects outside its boundaries. A middleground element, often consisting of carefully maintained plantings, blocks unwanted elements and frames the desired view. This middleground integrates the "borrowed" view into the garden's design. The viewer is encouraged to see all three areas - foreground, middleground, and background - as a single garden.
Japanese gardens might fall into one of these styles:
Other gardens also use similar rocks for decoration. Some of these come from distant parts of Japan. In addition, bamboos and related plants, evergreens including Japanese black pine, and such deciduous trees as maples grow above a carpet of ferns and mosses.
Though often thought of as tranquil sanctuaries that allow individuals to escape from the stresses of daily life, Japanese gardens are designed for a variety of purposes. Most gardens invite quiet contemplation, but may have also been intended for recreation, the display of rare plant specimens, or the exhibition of unusual rocks.
Kaiyu-shiki or Strolling Gardens require the observer to walk through the garden to fully appreciate it. A premeditated path takes observers through each unique area of a Japanese garden. Uneven surfaces are placed in specific spaces to prompt people to look down at particular points. When the observer looks up, they will see an eye-catching ornamentation which is intended to enlighten and revive the spirit of the observer. This type of design is known as the Japanese landscape principle of "hide and reveal".
Traditional Japanese sensibility attests that stones are actual beings with spirits that need to be treated with reverence. Stones are used to construct the garden's paths, bridges, and walkways. Stones also represent mountains where actual mountains are not viewable or present. They are always placed in odd numbers and a majority of the groupings reflect triangular shapes.
A water source in a Japanese garden should appear to be part of the natural surroundings; this is why one will not find fountains in traditional gardens. Man-made streams are built with curves and irregularities to create a serene and natural appearance. Lanterns are often placed beside some of the most prominent water basins (either a pond or a stream) in a garden representing the female and the male elements of water and fire. In Japanese tradition this is known as yin and yang. In some gardens one will find a dry pond or stream. Dry ponds and streams have as much impact as do the ones filled with water.
Green plants are the third element of Japanese gardens. Japanese traditions prefer minimal color so the use of flowers is generally parsimonious. Plants with colorful blooms are mostly used near a garden's entrance. Many plants in imitated Japanese gardens of the West are indigenous to Japan, though some sacrifices must be made to account for the differentiating climates. Some plants, such as sugar maple and firebush, give the garden a broader palette of seasonal color.
The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the government of Japan designates the most notable of the nation's scenic beauty as Special Places of Scenic Beauty, under the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties.[2]. As of March 1, 2007, 29 sites are listed, more than a half of which are Japanese gardens, as below;
Bold faces specify World Heritage sites.
However, the Education Minister is not eligible to have jurisdiction over any imperial property. These two gardens, administered by Imperial Household Agency, are also considered to be great masterpieces.
The aesthetic of Japanese gardens was introduced to the English-speaking community by Josiah Conder's Landscape Gardening in Japan ((Kelly & Walsh) 1893. It sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. A second edition was required in 1912.[6] Conder's principles have sometimes proved hard to follow:
Samuel Newsom, Japanese Garden Construction (1939) offered Japanese aesthetic as a corrective in the construction of rock gardens, which owed their quite separate origins in the West to the mid-nineteenth century desire to grow alpines in an approximation of Alpine scree.
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Copyrights:
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 | Gardener's Dictionary. Taylor's Dictionary for Gardeners, by Frances Tenenbaum. Copyright © 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Japanese garden". Read more |
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