Pavilion gardens on the city outskirts

It had been customary since Nara times for the families of the nobility to build their villas and gardens on the outskirts of the city Here they could escape the con straints of the urban grid layout and design their houses and gardens with greater respect for local topo graphical conditions. From the Heian period onwards, these estates became known as rikyu. "detached pal aces", or sento-gosho. "palaces for retired emperors".

One of the few suburban gardens still surviving from these times is Osawa no Ike, literally the "large swampy pond" created by Emperor Saga (809-S23) in the north-west of the capital. Heian-kyo The emperor dammed an existing river to produce a lake with a sur face area of some five acres. It formed the central at traction of hts detached Saga-in palace in the country to which he retired after his abdication in 823. In 876 Saga-in was converted into a Buddhist temple for the Shingon sect. The temple, called Oaikaku-ji. can still be seen today

Saga-in was undoubtedly a palace of outstanding beauty. The elegant right angles of its pavilion architec ture and their reflections in the pond must have of fered an exquisite counterpoint to the undulating con tours of the surrounding landscape. A popular Japa nese pastime even today is to sail out onto Osawa pond in early autumn and admire the moon. The ground rises gently towards the mountains to the north of the pond, while flat rice paddies lie to the east, west and south. The northern half of the pond contains the relatively large benten island, while the smaller kiku-shima, "chrysanthemum island", lies to the east. The charms of this delightful garden inspired poems such as the one below, taken from the Kokin-shu, an anthology of poety from the Heian period:

hito moto ga I had thought there was omoishi kiku wo but a single chrysanthemum here.
osawa no Who could have planted ike no soko the other one made, there in the dare ga uheken depths of Osawa pond?

The size and shape of the pond have changed little over the centuries, although its water level was raised by means of a higher dam in Meiji times, when it was used mainly to irrigate the local rice fields. Most of the rock settings on the banks of the pond were probably washed away as a result. Mirei Shigemori believes that rockwork which he uncovered during excavations in the north of the pond may represent a dry rock water fall.