In a Japanese garden, green moss is one of the most important components. It is a symbol of smallness of a human being in contrast to the great nature and the flow of time, as it takes long period of time for moss to cover the entire rocks or ground. Therefore grown moss tells us the shortness of a human life and is a good sign to correct the arrogance of human beings.

As you may know, values of Japanese are strongly related with Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto, the oldest Japanese religion, worships the great nature and does not intend to control the nature. Buddhism, which also deeply influences on our way of thinking, tells Read More

Now you understand three principles to enjoy Japanese garden in our previous post. The second principle, symbolization (mitate) is an important key to understand and enjoy a dry landscape garden or karesansui teien (枯山水庭園). As mentioned, a dry landscape garden is highly abstract. All natural objects such as mountains, water falls, flow of brook, and trees are represented by rocks, stones and moss. Some dry landscape gardens were designed to create the environment of zen training for zen monks. It is said that visitors are supposed to communicate with the garden silently and find your way of understanding the intention of the designer. This type of garden is designed to enjoy from inside the Read More

The most distinctive difference between Japanese garden and western-style garden is that Japanese ones are made as natural as possible whereas western ones in general arrange trees and rocks geometrically. Japanese garden designers follow three basic principles which are miniaturization (shukukei), symbolization (mitate) and “borrowed views”(shakkei). And those three principles are key to enjoy Japanese garden.

The first principle, miniaturization is to create natural views of mountain and brooks in reduced scale. The intention is to recreate idealized scene in a city to enjoy. This is usually applied to pond garden. The symbolization is to find dynamic landscape in small objects. Well observed symbolization is to see an island, a cape, or an inlet in an artificially-made hill or in rocks set Read More