The Japanese landscape: divine islands, divine ponds

It is difficult to imagine a better portrait of Japan than that painted by this poem, written by the twelfth-century poet Saigyo and perhaps inspired by a view over the Inland Sea. Japan is a country of countless isles in the earthquake belt of the eastern Pacific. Over 70 percent of its terrain is mountainous, with live volcanoes and hot springs, and cleft by deep valleys. The coastline is rocky and fissured, offering only occasional sandy bays. There are almost no flat plains. "Small islands in the sea", "winding rivers between mountains", "rugged rocks along the seashore", "stepped waterfalls" and "pebbles in mountain streams" are all terms in the vocabulary of visual archetypes describing Japan. The Japanese garden employs this same vocabulary; its language of forms reflects that of the landscape of Japan.

It is thus no surprise that the topography of the country should also be reflected m Japanese cosmogony in the beginning, so the Kojikichronicles of 712 relate, two deities gave birth to eight islands. Only later did they add other natural elements such as the sea. rivers, mountains, trees and herbs. According to Mirei Shigemori. this ancient theory derives from the impression made by the Japanese landscape on the first settlers arriving by sea. This impression subsequently left a deep impnnt upon the collective Japanese subconscious Man-made recreations of shinto. divine islands, and shmchi. divine ponds, are found even in the earliest prehistoric shnnes. and have proved one of the most fruitful archetypes m the history of the Japanese garden