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japanese-inspired gardens

Chapter 3: The Garden Path as a Journey

by Marc Peter Keane

Inside a mossy, roofed gate, half hidden by luxuriant foliage, a garden path beckons. Tempted, you enter, and in doing so, begin a journey. The garden path as a journey—an unusual idea perhaps? Nowhere is it more true than in the tea gardens and stroll gardens of Japan, though for very different reasons—the former being a journey of spirit and aesthetics, and the latter, one of time and space. Understanding how the path has been given meaning in these garden forms not only allows a deeper appreciation of Japanese gardens, but also yields abundant ideas for designers who wish to incorporate aspects of Japanese gardens in their own landscapes.

The Tea Garden: A Journey of Spirit and Aesthetics

Tea gardens developed during Japan's medieval period, first appearing in the early 17th century along with the advent of the tea ceremony itself, more properly known as chanoyu or sado, the Way of Tea. In order to achieve the appropriate quietude of spirit required to appreciate the aesthetics of sado, a place of preparation was required, and the development of that space marked the beginning of the tea garden. Ideally, this preparatory ground captures the sensory experience of a trip away from busy town life to a secluded mountain hut, passing through forested hills along the way.

To evoke the sense of a long journey in the small space between garden entry and teahouse, these gardens employ a series of thresholds, each one accentuating the feeling of passage, of entering progressively deeper into a new world. The thresholds begin with a roofed outer gate, sotomon, which separates the tea garden from the outside world. After entering, the last guest turns to the gate and closes the wooden doors, shutting them with a wooden cross-bolt. The dull smite of wood on wood signals the arrival of guests to the host, who waits unseen inside. To those who have just entered, it has a deeper meaning: they are no longer part of the world they just left. The dual concepts of a tea garden as a place of passage and as a purified place separate from the outer world are also reflected in the common name for the tea garden, roji. One meaning of roji is "alleyway," which implies passage; but the word is also found in the Lotus Sutra, in which there is an allegory comparing the profane world to a burning house and the pure world to a roji (outer world), to which the enlightened may escape from the flames.

Continuing through the tea garden, guests walk slowly along a path through the garden. If there are several paths, then those not to be used are marked as being closed by placing a single round river stone tied with a black palm-fiber cord on a stepping stone in the path; a simple symbol that means "do not enter."

Finding a small, roofed waiting bench, called a koshikake machiai, guests sit down and wait quietly for their host to invite them forward. There is no compelling reason to make them wait; preparations for the tea gathering were most likely begun at dawn (when water drawn from the well is most cool and fresh) and have been complete for some time. No, the guests are allowed to wait, giving them time to commune with the ephemeral qualities of the garden: crickets chirping, dew on moss, wind rustling in the trees.

The next threshold in the garden is a small gate, called a middle gate, chumon, that stands halfway between the outer entry and the teahouse itself. The portion of the garden first entered from the outer gate is known as the outer garden, soto roji, while the portion nearer the teahouse is the inner garden, uchi roji; the middle gate marks the separation between the two. Although some are beautifully detailed roofed gates, more often than not a middle gate is a simple panel of loosely woven split bamboo attached to an upright post, its significance being not in its elaborate design but simply in its presence.

Having passed the middle gate, guests stop next at a water laver, tsukubai, where they rinse their hands and mouths in a ritual act of cleansing, a preparation of body and spirit prerequisite to entering the teahouse. The laver is usually a stone that has been carved with a basin to hold water and is set low to the ground—thus the name tsukubai, which derives from the verb tsukubau, to crouch down. The low position of the laver requires that those who use it bow down before it; the lowering of the body before water is an intentional act, showing humility before the "wellspring of life." Cleansing complete, the guests move forward in single file to the entry of the teahouse, nijiriguchi, a square door so small that they are forced to bow down in order to pass. This is another act of humility, in this case intended to express that all those who enter to join the gathering are equal.

Gates to be entered; benches for quiet communing; water to cleanse; a series of thresholds in the garden, some physical, some inward—by passing through the garden, the guests are changed, calmed, and made more aware of subtleties, all in preparation for the tea gathering that follows. The tea garden is not a "garden" at all, in the sense of a place to gather and display plants or prized stones. It is not meant to be stunningly attractive, nor to impress visitors with a splendid horticultural display. Rather, it is given over primarily to broadleaf and coniferous evergreen trees and shrubs, and contains few, if any, flowering plants; the change of the seasons is noted in more subtle ways. The tea garden is simply a path, and the path itself a journey.

In order to recreate a tea garden on your own property, it is not necessary to mimic the precise forms that exist in Japan, nor to use the same materials that are employed there. The most important thing is to grasp the essence of a tea garden and creatively reconstruct that in your garden. The tea garden is a path that evokes a spiritual or aesthetic change in those who pass along it. In Japan, tea gardens are designed to instill the aesthetics of reserve and rusticity, known as wabi or sabi, in preparation for partaking of matcha (whisked tea); however, the path you design for yourself could have a different intent. The essential aspects that must be included are the sense of passage from "one place" to "another," and a sense of calm. The former is best accomplished by creating a series of thresholds in the garden that lend a feeling of depth and passage as one moves through them. The sense of calm is best achieved by designing with an understated naturalness and a rarefied palette.

The Stroll Garden: A Journey of Time and Space

Another type of Japanese garden that places great importance on the path is the stroll garden. Stroll gardens usually are quite large and have a pond in the central area encircled by a path (or several paths), which allows visitors to stroll about. These gardens developed after the medieval period, from the 17th to 19th centuries, when travel throughout the country was severely limited by the central government. Because the lords couldn't travel freely, they created private gardens where such "excursions" could be undertaken. In their gardens they built a number of scenes that reminded visitors of famous places from around the country, familiar from well-known tales and woodblock prints, as well as from stories told by those returning from religious pilgrimages (one of the few kinds of travel for which it was possible to obtain a permit). By traveling about the garden path, visitors could take "excursions" designed for them by their host.

Among the famous scenes depicted in stroll gardens were natural landscapes such as Mount Fuji, Amanohashidate (a famous spot along the Japan Sea coast), and the Oi River near Kyoto. The scenes also included built objects such as Togetsukyo and Tsutenkyo, both famous bridges near Kyoto. One garden owner even went so far as to have an entire postal town reconstructed for the pleasure of his guests, who may not have had a chance to see such an "exotic" out-of-the-way place. Some scenes were reminiscent not of Japan but of China, like the Su dike in the West Lake near Hangzhou; and other gardens contained scenes that were drawn from poetry rather than actual localities, often poetry of the earlier, Heian period. The path that meandered about the garden passed these various scenes, hiding and revealing them in turns (a technique called mie-gakure), allowing the visitor to take a broad excursion within the confines of the garden.

The scenes were not recreated in miniature, as in a model, but rather were expressed symbolically. The essence of a natural scene was extracted and re-created in the garden. For instance, to evoke the feeling of Amanohashidate, which is a narrow, pine-covered spit of land arcing across a wide bay, all that was needed was one pine tree planted on a short peninsula in a pond, edged with some well-placed boulders.

The paths of the stroll gardens, like those of the tea gardens, elicit the sense of embarking on a journey. Unlike the tea garden, however, the journey is not an inward one, but rather one that transcends time and space to allow those who circumambulate the garden to venture to faraway places in times past or present.

If you own a large property and are interested in creating a stroll garden, the key aspect of the design is to develop a series of scenes along a path that meanders around a central element, usually a pond or lake. The scenes may depict whatever you wish. For instance, they could be reflections of the natural world in your area. Such a garden would include a series of "mini-ecosystems," each of which mirrors the geology and flora of the natural environment surrounding your home. This is similar to the aspect of Japanese stroll gardens, which have "mountain, meadow, and ocean" districts within them. The key to designing this way is to not be too literal but rather, as stated in the 11th-century gardening manual, Sakuteiki, to "visualize the famous landscapes of our country and come to understand their most interesting points. Re-create the essence of those scenes in the garden but do so interpretatively not strictly."

Another, perhaps more poetic, option for designing a stroll garden is to create scenes that are interpretations not of the physical world, but rather of cultural themes. This is accomplished by creating physical scenes that are in fact contemplative musings on cultural subjects: science, literature, history, and so on. Rikugien, for example, a large stroll garden in Tokyo, employs the six classic themes of poetry as its motif, laying out a series of 88 scenes derived from poetic epithets and themes that were favored by the owner.

Designing Paths

The speed and cadence of movement through a garden, whether a tea garden or a large stroll garden (or any other garden, for that matter) is determined by the design of the path. Of course, the placement of the path within the garden is important in determining how a garden will be revealed, but it is not the only factor; the design of the path surface itself also influences the experience.

Materials

Imagine yourself on a path made of a material that is easily walked upon, such as smooth gravel or neatly arranged cut granite pavers. You can walk freely, at whatever speed you desire, head held up, and look around as you move through the garden. If, however, the path is made of small stepping stones that provide uncertain footing, the speed at which you can walk will drop dramatically, and your movements will become staccato as you navigate from stone to stone. In order to watch your footing, your head will drop, and you will not look around while walking. The way in which your head is held—and thus the way in which the garden is revealed as you pass through—is determined not only by where the path is placed but also by the materials from which it is made.

The designers of tea gardens made maximum use of this technique, creating paths that carefully guide guests through the garden in stages. Modern garden makers can learn much from these master designers of the past: a path made of small stepping stones, for instance, could lead into the garden from the outer gate, then turn into a nobedan, a section of path made of small stones fitted together into a neat rectangular form, somewhat like a rectangular tatami mat (in fact it is also called an ishidatami or stone tatami). Whereas stepping stones are difficult to walk on (forcing the cadence to slow and the head to drop), a nobedan is easier to navigate, enabling you to raise your head and look forward. Consequently, it is appropriate to place a nobedan at a point where the sudden lifting of the head will reveal some aspect of the garden—a distant teahouse, a lantern, or some other view. In another design, a stepping stone path could be punctuated by a larger stone, like a garanseki, a round foundation stone that was used as a pedestal for the massive wooden columns in old temples. Whereas you will look down while crossing the stepping stones, once you step up onto the larger stone, you can pause and look about the garden freely. These "punctuation" stones are often placed at a juncture where several paths meet, acting as nodes in the flow of movement through the garden.

The material of which a path is made controls movements and vision, but it also adds the dimension of sound to the garden. Soil paths dampen the sounds of footsteps, gravel adds a crunching sound (with rounded pebbles being more pleasant than crushed gravel) and stepping stones provide a percussive tapping sound. These sounds are heightened when visitors wear wooden sandals; the rubber-soled shoes popular today lessen the intensity of footfall sounds.

Balance

Visual balance is another important aspect of path design. Balance in Japanese gardens (as in all of the arts of Japan) can be described as asymmetric and dynamic. Whereas objects of importance in European gardens, such as fountains and sculptures, are typically placed on center with a path, thereby developing the axial site-line of an allée, Japanese gardens favor asymmetry. When paths are designed asymmetrically, the line they form in the garden tends to meander or, alternatively, develops in a complex series of straight sections that meet each other obliquely. The paths never (or rarely) align "on-center" with an object of importance, a teahouse, lantern, or prominent planting, as in formal European gardens, but rather approach them from an angle, offering oblique views that are less formal.

Those designing Japanese gardens outside of Japan often are tempted to resort to stereotypical elements—raked white sand, red bridges, and so on. But there are other, more subtle ways of designing gardens that may not necessarily contain obvious Japanesque elements, yet still provide the essence of the original. Consider, for instance, the way paths have been used in Japanese gardens—to lead those who walk them on spiritual and spatial journeys—and thoughtfully employ this design principle in your own garden. Having done so, the feeling of a Japanese garden will be transmitted without resorting to stereotypes. After all, we turn to the garden for refreshment, for repose, and for discovery. When a garden path takes us on one of those journeys, it has offered us all it can.

Marc Peter Keane is a graduate of Cornell University's Department of Landscape Architecture. He has made Kyoto his home for the past 15 years, first as a research fellow of Kyoto University, now as a landscape architect and writer. His design work includes private residences, company grounds, and temple gardens. Keane is also a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Design at the Kyoto University of Arts and Design, and the author of Japanese Garden Design and a soon-to-be-published translation of the Sakuteiki, Japan's 1,000-year-old gardening treatise. Examples of Keane's work can be found at http://www.mpkeane.com.