Japanese Rock Gardens

The Japanese Rock Garden

( 枯山水 karesansui)• "dry landscape"

gardens, often called "Zen gardens" were influenced mainly by Zen Buddism and can be found at Zen temples of meditation.

Meditation

• emptying or concentration of mind: the emptying of the mind of thoughts, or the concentration of the mind on one thing, in order to aid mental or spiritual development, contemplation, or relaxation

Symbolism

• Unlike other traditional gardens, there is no water present in Karesansui gardens. There is gravel or sand, raked or not raked, that symbolizes sea, ocean, rivers or lakes.

Raking as Design and Meditation

• The act of raking the gravel into a pattern recalling waves or rippling water has an aesthetic function. Zen priests practice this raking also to help their concentration. Achieving perfection of lines is not easy. Developing variations in patterns is a creative and inspiring challenge.

Gardens as Art

• Japanese gardens are a living work of art in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature, they are constantly sculpted to maintain and enhance the overall experience.

Gardens as Art

• Over time, the garden is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of training and pruning. Part of the art is to keep the garden almost still, like a painting.

• Stone arrangements and other miniature elements are used to represent mountains and natural water elements and scenes, islands, rivers and waterfalls. Other, mostly stone, objects are sometimes used symbolically to represent mountains, islands, boats, or even people.

Gardens in Art

• What is not disputed is the fact that karesansui garden scenery was (and still is) inspired (or even based on) originally Chinese and later also Japanese, landscape paintings.

Hokusai 1760-1849

Gardens in Art

Hiroshige1797-1858

Hiroshige “The Wave”

• Though each garden is different in its composition, they mostly use rock groupings and shrubs to represent a classic scene of mountains, valleys and waterfalls taken from Chinese landscape painting. In some of them the view also incorporates existing scenery, e.g. the hills behind, as "borrowed scenery" (using a technique called Shakkei).

Make sure that all the stones, right down to the front of the arrangement, are placed with their best sides showing.

There should always be more horizontal than vertical stones. If there are "running away" stones there must be "chasing" stones. If there are "leaning" stones, there must be "supporting" stones.

In the garden book Sakuteiki "Creating a garden" is expressed as "setting stones“,; literally, the "act of setting stones upright.”

At the time the Sakuteiki was written, the placement of stones was perceived as the primary act of gardening.

Miniature Rock Gardens