In America, the love of nature is individualistic. It isn’t universally shared, nor incorporated into our mainstream religions. As newcomers, we viewed our land as something to be conquered. The Japanese never had to conquer theirs. They are a part of it, and their love for it is deep, ancient and communal, as well as spiritual. Kyoto was the capital of Japan for more than a thousand years, from 794 to 1868. Emperors and shoguns built palaces there; Shinto and Buddhist priests built temples; all of them planted gardens. Many have been preserved—though “preserved” sounds bloodless. These gardens have been clipped, watered, weeded, pruned, swept, walked in, gazed at, prayed in, honored and cherished for hundreds of years. If you’re interested in gardens, Kyoto is the place. My friend Patrick Chassé, a landscape architect, told me where to go. On the grounds of Katsura Imperial Villa and Sento Gosho are two great “stroll gardens.” This is a form that flowered during the Edo period (1603–1867). Before, aristocratic gardens were designed primarily for a stationary viewer, but the stroll garden invited the emperor and his party to amble along a path, offering a slowly changing viewpoint. These are supremely sophisticated landscapes that employ all sorts of design elements that were unfamiliar to me: use of the diagonal; “hide and reveal”; shakkei, or “borrowed landscape”; the incorporation of miniature and metaphor. In the West, traditionally we have used straight lines, frontality and symmetry. We admire a direct approach, a doorway centered on a wall. But the Japanese favor the oblique, and their doorways are on one side. They admire subtlety and indirection. The great imperial villa at Katsura is designed on the diagonal: the front door is off-center, and so is the walkway leading to it. It is surprisingly unsettling. Western design says, “Center and symmetry mean ‘important.’ ” Japanese design says, “Don’t make assumptions.” Japanese design says, “Pay attention.” I like this. “Hide and reveal” is a subtle way to manipulate the viewer’s experience. Coming around a corner you find your view blocked by a tree or a berm, and a flicker of frustration heightens your
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delight when, a moment later, a vista suddenly appears: a waterfall with an exquisite pattern of ripples, or a teahouse framed by cherry trees. “Borrowed landscape” is the use of a distant view—a hillside, or a mountain—seamlessly integrated into the garden, so that the larger vista reads as part of the garden composition. Tucking a mountain into your garden is quite an ambitious endeavor, requiring patience, vision and— let’s face it—affluence. Katsura and Sento Gosho are a writer’s dream. They’re narrative gardens, filled with sequential delights: exquisite stepping-stones; charming arched bridges; dark, limpid pools. The slope of the hill, the shape of the stones lining the shore, the placement of the teahouse against the trees, the carefully plucked pines—this feels like a pinnacle of beauty and refinement. Japanese garden design is more than a thousand years old, and it has perfected things we’ve never dreamed
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emperors and shoguns built palaces in Kyoto; shinto and Buddhist priests built temples; all planted gardens. many have been clipped, watered, pruned, swept, walked in, gazed at, prayed in and cherished