THURSDAY afternoon, OCTOBER 18, 2007, following lunch at Junsei on the temple grounds, we will have the opportunity to visit – on one's own or in small groups – several exquisite gardens in the immediate Nanzen-ji area.
Nanzen-ji (Southern Mountain Temple) is considered one of the most famous and important temples in Japan, the headquarters of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism. The main buildings are surrounded by twelve sub-temples, three of which house gardens open to the public.
The most well known of the gardens in the temple complex, however, lies adjacent to the Shohojo (“Small Abbot’s Quarters”) within the main Nanzen-ji building.
Here’s a description by a first time Western visitor discovering the garden for the first time:
A ZEN GARDEN WITH NO ONE IN IT
It's raining as we pass under the massive wooden gate of Nanzenji, a temple built in the thirteenth century. In mid-October, the tips of the maple leaves have already begun to turn; in another month they will go up in a flame of red. Because of the weather and the lateness of the day there are few tourists, and after changing into a pair of slippers and padding down a dim wooden corridor to the porch overlooking the temple's famous Zen garden, we're surprised to find ourselves alone.
Like most Zen gardens, this one is to be contemplated from the edge, not entered. Designed in 1600 and guided by the principle of yohaku-no-bi, or "the beauty of extra white," the garden consists of mostly empty space: a long rectangle filled with raked white gravel. The exception is an irregularly shaped island of moss at the far end where a number of large stones, rounded azalea bushes, and three trees have been set in an arrangement that seems, the more we stare at it, to possess profound meaning. The largest stone echoes the shape of the mountain behind it in the distance, creating an elegant rhyme. The garden's original name was Toranoko-watashi, "young tigers crossing the water," and if you squint at the stones in a certain way, they do take on the humped forms of animals leaping across the waves.
But what about the precise placement of that tree, what is the meaning behind that? Or the rounded forms of that clump of bushes that seem so significant? Is it possible to break the garden down into its elements, since the enigma lies in their combination? What is accidental, we find ourselves wondering, and what is deliberate? Are we really to believe that the original meaning of the garden, if there was such a thing, has been preserved through four hundred years of weather and pruning, and if not, why are we sitting here, staring speechlessly?
- Nicole Krauss, "Eight Ways of Looking at a Garden",
Traveler magazine (October 2005)
The three other temple gardens within the Nanzen-ji complex open for public viewing are Konchi’in, Tenjuan and Nanzen’in.
The dry garden in front of KONCHI’IN’s main worship hall is thought to have been designed by Kobori Enshu, traditional Japan’s most famous garden designer and architect. Strolling around the sub-temple will bring you to a pond containing an island and across from the pond a small Shinto Shrine. Follow the path around the pond and you will find yourself in facing a large gateway that leads to a path lined with lanterns and ending in a Shinto torii gate.
TENJUAN’s garden consists of a small waterfall, two ponds, a waterfall and a white sand footpath. This sub-temple was founded in the late 14th century in honor of the founder of Nanzen-ji. Much like the other buildings here this temple was leveled in the Onin War (1467 – 1477) and not rebuilt until 1602
NANZEN'IN: On the site of a villa originally built for Emperor Kameyama in 1274, this Nanzenji sub-temple has undergone numerous reconstructions, the most recent being in the Edo period. The garden here is reported to have been created by Muso Soseki (1275-1351), but because the garden has been changed so often if he did indeed design it, few if any of his original ideas can still be seen. The garden's pond contains several small islands, one even in the shape of the Japanese character for heart (shin). The hill that houses the waterfall which feeds the pond also is home to the temple Bell Tower.
Just outside Nanzen-ji lies MURIN’AN, a private residential garden from the late nineteenth century designed to complement the Kyoto home of one of Japan’s most important and influential early modernizers, Yamagata Aritomo.
The site is primarily covered with mowed lawn, but two small streams, clusters of stones and clipped shrubs line the water features that meander across the space. It is one of the finest residential gardens open to the public in Kyoto.
Between 1892 and 1896 Yamagata worked with Ogawa Jihei, the era’s best known garden architect, on this garden and the attached two-story house.
In Murin’an Ogawa created a stroll garden around two pairs of brooks and shallow ponds, all fed by water from a nearby canal. He included in his design as well the entire Higashiyama mountain range looming up behind the garden as shakei or “borrowed scenery”.
The trees [ at the edge of the property] form both the vertical elements and the horizontal trimming line to frame the mountains. Below the gap in the trees, the eye is drawn down a three-tiered cascade from which the water flows over a miniature rapids into the first pond. A second stream flows from the north part of the garden and is spanned by a bridge from which a rock composition at the confluence of the streams can be seen. Other such compositions are interspersed among the clipped shrubs in a way that draws the eye across the intervening lawn space.
… A member of the so-called "literary" tradition and considered a progressive thinker in his time, Yamagata's preferences were toward what was known as the "naturalistic" rather than the more stylized gardens and limited palette of earlier periods. Despite this, the garden is firmly rooted in the Edo stroll garden tradition with Ogawa offering little innovation other than the introduction of some European plant materials and the deployment of patches of lawn around the buildings. The topiaried azalea, the use of shakkei to draw outside elements into the garden, and the revealing and hiding of views as one passes around a prescribed path are the techniques that structure the experience of the garden and would be recognizable to anyone familiar with gardens throughout the last two centuries.
The house overlooking this tranquil garden space, as a product of the Meiji period (1868 – 1912) itself, also represents a blend between classic traditional architectural taste and the Western-influenced modernism influential in Japan at the time.
- adapted and quoted from “Murinan”, www.jgarden.org
Not far from Murin’an lies Heian Shrine, a colorful Shinto shrine which honors three of Japan’s emperors constructed as a model of the capital’s earliest palace in 1895 to mark the 1100 anniversary of the movement of the capital to Kyoto (then known as “Heian”).
Behind the main buildings, surrounding the shrine on three sides, one can stroll through SHIN’EN, one of the largest gardens in the city, another design by Ogawa Jihei (who also designed Murin’an just a few blocks away).
This extensive stroll garden combines traditional elements of Japanese garden design with a balanced design sense imported from the West and, like many gardens in the area, makes extensive use of water from a nearby (and recently constructed – at the time) canal.
- Nishi Shin'en (West Garden): The focus of the Nishi Shin'en is a quiet pond. The irises around the pond bloom in all their glory in early summer, lending the garden an ethereal beauty. A tea ceremony arbor is located in the cluster of trees in the garden's southwest.
- Minami Shin'en (South Garden): This garden is a Heian-style garden designed for holding a garden party during which aristocrats amused themselves by composing poems. In spring, the garden is bright with the deep pink blossoms of drooping cherry trees. The cherry blossoms are followed by azaleas in early summer and by hagi (Japanese bush clover) in autumn. The garden contains a smaller garden featuring plants and flowers which appear in Heian era (894 – 1185) literary works.
- Naka Shin'en (Middle Garden): Visitors who pass through the cluster of trees behind the shrine's main buildings will find a beautiful garden surrounding a large pond. Across the center of the pond one can cross a walkway consisting of stone pillars which once served as foundation stones for the girders famous bridges in the center of the city. The pond is surrounded by an exquisite expanse of rabbit-ear irises.
- Higashi Shin'en (East Garden): This garden was constructed in the early 1910s. In the center of the garden, there is a pond on which courtiers are said to have gone boating in ancient times. Borrowing the Higashiyama hills as background scenery, the garden contains two elegant old-style buildings which add to the garden's overall charm.
DON'T PANIC, FOLKS; LEE WILL BRING COPIES OF THESE REMARKS TO PASS OUT ON THURSDAY FOR YOUR INFORMATION WHILE VISITING THE GARDENS LISTED
