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The Japanese Garden

The Japanese Garden
By Sophie Walker
Phaidon Press, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0714874777
Review by Graham Hardman
Honorary Vice-President of the Japanese Garden Society

Those who have had the pleasure of visiting gardens in Japan will know what a wonderful experience it can be. Beguiling, stimulating, captivating, or in some cases possibly puzzling – is it really a garden?

Puzzlement was the experience of Sophie Walker, author of The Japanese Garden when first introduced to them. What do they mean, what can they offer? Her search for understanding led to several years of research into the origins and deeper meanings of Japanese gardens as an art-form, the result being this excellent book.

Written with considerable passion and eloquence, her focus is ‘not on the history or scholarship of the many types of Japanese garden, but on its broader aspiration to high art and its ability to engage complex conceptual and philosophical propositions’ (p. 303). This makes it a welcome addition to the available books covering the history and styles of garden.

The main text of the book consists of eleven essays by the author with intriguing and seductive titles, each addressing different aspects of the Japanese garden. This approach works well in the context of her stated focus. The question ‘What is a Japanese garden?’ is deceptively simple and defies a straightforward answer. Approaching the subject by considering multiple aspects offers the reader an insight into the complex nature of gardens as an art-form.

Each essay includes interesting and informative archive photographs from many sources, and is followed by a series of garden images that relate to the particular theme being explored. Interspersed throughout the book are seven ‘guest’ essays by Lee Ufan, Tan Twan Eng, Miyajima Tatsao, Marcus du Sautoy, John Pawson, Anish Kapoor and Ando Tadao. Each of these excellent short commentaries provides an additional viewpoint, adding further insights into the complex nature of Japanese gardens and our experience of them.

All of these elements contribute to the overall exposition of what underlies the Japanese garden as a work of art, placing it at the heart of Japanese culture. The excellent garden images, many taken by the author, have informative descriptions rather than simple captions. The images have, unusually these days, a matt finish, which renders them more intimate and engaging somehow, a welcome change from the all too common glossy images.

Religious, cultural and philosophical influences on the thinking behind the nature of gardens over time are explored, with references derived from three existing sources in equal measure; Japanese gardens, Japanese culture and Japanese religious texts.

The introduction, ‘The Nature of the Garden’ describes them as ‘…an ancient cultural form that is potent, mysterious and esoteric’ (p. 6) that has ‘stated and restated invention with imagination and ambition for some 1,500 years’ (p. 8). Here the enigma of the Japanese garden and its place in our current era is explored.

In ‘Beauty, Terror and Power’ the author sets the scene of the wide range of influences – nature in all its beauty and the terror of the forces of the earth so prominent in Japan, Shinto, Chinese culture, geomancy and Buddhism. How these have been interpreted during the periods in Japanese history follows, with an emphasis on early prototypes that embody important and enduring characteristics.

Aspects of design are used as themes in several essays: ‘The Hidden, Implied and Imagined’ covers how symbolism is used, gravel becoming the ocean, stones becoming mountains and so on, allowing the viewer’s imagination to create the scene hinted at by the garden maker. ‘In the Japanese garden beauty lies not simply in the thing itself, but in the possibility of what it is able to impart’ (p. 122-123).

‘The Way, Body and Mind’ deals with how a garden is revealed as the viewer walks through a Stroll garden, how it requires engagement of body and mind in doing so. The manner in which garden makers have used the path (or way) to engage the viewer in this journey is well described.

‘Time, Space and the Dry Garden’ discusses the power of the abstract Dry Garden of stone and gravel, perhaps the most commonly associated with Japan. ‘This unlikely form of garden is conceptually challenging, and yet its inanimate nature broadens the intellectual possibility of the garden, giving rise to multiple readings of content, scale and meaning…’ (p. 182).

‘Inner Space: the Courtyard Garden’ explores how enclosed gardens and spaces have been used in the past and their significance in ryokan, Japan’s guest inns. A small space within the machiya house ‘produces a very particular and intense private garden…’ (p. 225).

Religious themes are referenced throughout, but in particular: ‘Expanded Understanding’ in which we read about the influence of the sun and the moon in the garden, relating this to Zen Buddhist thinking, while ‘Zen Challenge: the Unenterable Garden’ beseeches us to ‘enter the garden not with our feet, but with our imaginations’ (p. 156).

‘Duality and Reflection’ describes the use of opposites in the garden, ‘the whole exists only with the mutual reinforcement of duality: ‘being’ and ‘non-being’… heaven and earth, birth and death, time and void, zero and infinity…’ (p. 94), a common thread in many Japanese arts.

‘Death, Tea and the Garden’ deals with the Tea Ceremony and Tea Garden, having equal status with the Tea House and the associated wabi sabi aesthetic in the garden.

Finally, ‘The Poetry of Plants’ discusses the role of plants in the Japanese garden, strikingly different from that in Western gardens. When plants are used in the Japanese garden ‘they form an indispensable symbolic contribution to the philosophical or poetic vision of the garden’ (p. 242).

At the end of the book are several useful reference sections: on plants found in Japanese gardens, giving the Japanese name in romaji and kanji as well as the western botanical name, a helpful short description of the periods in Japanese history, a comprehensive glossary, bibliography and index.

This is an impressive, informative and very readable book, written with considerable passion from an artistic perspective, providing insights and imagery not usually found in books on Japanese gardens. It should appeal to anyone with an interest in Japanese gardens, or indeed Japanese culture.

On picking up the book it is immediately clear that this is not a typical glossy-image based treatise. It has no dust jacket with photograph, just a plain green hard cover with a circle cut into it, presumably representing the Buddhist ‘window of enlightenment’ as seen at Genko-an, a temple in Kyoto that is described in the book.

Inside there is a background colour coding to distinguish the different contents: grey for the author’s text, white for garden images, green for the reference section and seven different colours for the ‘guest’ essays. This visual identification works well in identifying the multiple elements of the book, and will appeal to those who like to ‘dip in’ or return to sections of particular interest.

The author is a young British Garden Maker with a burgeoning international portfolio. After a degree in Art History and further study in Horticulture, she has the accolade of being the youngest woman to design a Show garden at Chelsea in 2014.