The rock archetype: iwakura and iwasaka

The Japanese fascination, indeed obsession with binding, manipulating and even crippling plants for gardens or miniature landscapes thus has its roots in a cultural phenomenon dating back literally thousands of years.

The appreciation of the beauty of natural rock has been one of the most pronounced characteristics of the Japanese garden throughout its history. Rocks are employed in garden composition for their sensory, scenic and symbolic effects, a distinction David Slawson introduced. Many Japanese and Western academics trace this love of pure, unadulterated stone to the worship - possibly dating from neolithic times - of huge boulders and rocky outcrops such as those found in ancient Shinto shrines. These rocks were often bound with the shime-nawa ropes mentioned above to indicate their sacred character, as is the case in the Omiwa shrine near Nara. Rocks thus identified are accepted as go-shintai, the abode of a deity, leading many to conclude that prehistoric Shintoism must have undergone an animistic phase. It is my opinion, however, that the appreciation of the beauty of rocks, and the worship of a divine presence concealed behind them, is a relatively late phenomenon in the history of Shintoism. Such rocks were originally called iwakura and iwasaka, literally meaning "rock seat" and "rock boundary", suggesting that they were placed in preanimistic times as markers, denoting occupation of land or property. At some stage their original meaning and function were forgotten, and they acquired religious as well as territorial significance. Later still even similar naturally occurring (not man-made) rock-formations came to be seen as abodes of deities.

Mirei Shigemori, on the other hand, argues that certain unique natural stone and rock formations were considered sacred from the very beginning. To these were added, over the course of time, other rocks, thereby creating a sacred precinct which was at least in part man-made. In the final phase, a particular sanctuary might have all its rocks imported. This marked the beginning of Japanese garden architecture proper.

However different these standpoints, both underline the special status afforded the natural rock in Japan. Castle walls aside, natural stone has never played a mapr role as a building material in traditional Japanese architecture. On the contrary, stone is finely appreciated for the subtle distinctions of its form, colour and texture, and an individual rock may even be assigned the human characteristics of head and feet, front and back. Rock has thereby acquired archetypal status, and a Japanese garden without an unusual rock or rock group, natural or carved, is quite inconceivable.