Gardens in ancient Japan

Almost nothing has survived of the gardens of ancient Japan. Their forms and functions can thus only be infer­red from a limited number of literary sources, archeolo-gical excavations and hypothetical reconstructions by Japanese scholars.

The Nihon shoki, the Chronicles of Japan of 720 AD whose records span a period from prehistoric Japan up to 697 AD, contains sporadic references to gardens which, when taken together, add up to a surprisingly clear picture of the first palace gardens in Japan. Below is a selection of these entries:

In the spring of 74 AD, so the Nikon shoki relates, Emperor Keiko "resided in the Kuguri Palace and, let­ting loose carp in a pond, amused himself by looking at them morning and night."'3 In 401 AD Emperor Richu had a pond built at his palace in lhare. In Novem­ber 402 "the Emperor launched the two-hulled boat on the pond of Ichishi at lhare and went on board with the imperial concubine, each separately, and feasted."14 In around 413, the consort of Emperor Ingio was "walking alone in the garden" when a nobleman on horseback looked over the hedge and said: '"What an excellent gardener thou art. Pray, madam, let me have one of those orchids.'"15 In 486 Emperor Kenzo "went to the park, where he held revel by the winding streams".

In 612 an emigre from Korea faced banishment to an island because of his flecked skin. Empress Suiko pared him, however, when she heard his plea that he could "make the figures of hills and mountains". Thanks to his remarkable talents, he was subsequently employed to create a "Mount Sumeru" and a "Bridge of Wu" in the southern courtyard of the imperial pal­ace.'7 It is thought that this Bridge of Wu may have been an ornamental bow-shaped bridge such as is frequently found in Chinese gardens. The shape and nature of Mount Sumeru remains, however, a mystery.

In 625, during the reign of the same Empress Suiko, a minister by the name of Soga no Umako - a member of the powerful Soga clan - owned a palace "on the bank of the river Asuka. A small pond had been dug in the courtyard, and there was a little island in the mid­dle of the pond. Therefore, the men of that time called him shima no oho omi, which translates as 'Lord of the Island(s)'."'8 This palace later passed into the hands of the imperial family and acquired the name of Shima no miya, "Palace of the Isles". It is mentioned in a number of poems in the earliest anthology of Japanese poetry, the Manyoshu or "Collection of a Myriad Leaves" which was compiled in the mid-eighth century.

However fragmentary these literary references, they nevertheless enable us to piece together a fairly accu­rate portrait of the first Japanese garden prototype. The earliest palace gardens were clearly of impressive size. Why else should a powerful minister be called af­ter his garden? They were located in or near the south­ern courtyards of royal or noble residences. Their chief scenic elements included a pond with one or more is­lands, symbolic representations of an ocean landscape, together with man-made mountains and a winding stream with rocks placed along its banks.

It is not known precisely where within Fujiwara-kyo. capital of the Fujiwara clan (694-710), or Heijo-kyo. "Capital of the Castle of Tranquility" (710-784). these gardens were located, nor where they lay in relation to the imperial palaces themselves. Only a few such gar­dens have been excavated, and much remains hypo­thetical It is generally believed that the two above-named capitals, with their palaces and Buddhist tem­ples, were modest imitations of the architecture of the Chinese T'ang dynasty. Thus it may be surmised that their gardens, too, were influenced by those of the T'ang, which ranged from huge pleasure gardens, via rock gardens copying mountains and gorges, to the gardens of court nobles and ministers.

552 AD is widely accepted as the year in which Ja­pan began seriously to copy China's far superior cul­ture. Japans oldest chronicles, the Kojiki of 712 and the Ninon shoki of 720. both agree that this was the year m which Buddhism officially reached Japan. To­gether with Buddhism (which was imported from the kingdom of Korea) came the Chinese script and various works of Chinese art. This by no means implies there were no contacts with Korea or China before this date With time, relations between the Japanese islands and the mainland were strengthened by official missions to the Chinese court. P Varley writes:

"The Japanese dispatched a total of four missions to Sui China during the period 600-614 and fifteen to T'ang between 630 and 838. The larger missions usually consisted of groups of about four ships that trans­ported more than five hundred people, including offi­cial envoys, students, Buddhist monks and translators. Some of these visitors remained abroad for long stret­ches of time - up to thirty or more years - and some never returned The trip was exceedingly dangerous, and the fact that so many risked it attests to the avidity with which the Japanese of this age sought to acquire the learning and culture of China."

This first large wave of Chinese influence left traces m Japanese thought and art which can still be felt to­day Sierksma divides acculturation processes into three phases: first, a phase of identification, of simple imita­tion of the foreign culture. This is succeeded by a phase of remterpretation and. finally, by a phase of complete assimilation and absorption I see the Japa­nese absorption of Chinese culture as following this same rogression, whereby the first phase corresponds to the Tumulus (250-552) and Asuka (552-710) eras, and the second to the Nara era (710-794) and the early years of the Heian period. Sierksma writes of this second phase: "Acculturation is always characterized by remterpretation Objects and ideas are taken over from the strange culture, but derive their meaning from the context of the old culture within which they are now placed. Or again, indigenous elements of cul­ture are given a new meaning in the context of the new strange culture."

Such regular cultural exchanges with China exerted a profound influence upon the religion, arts, govern­ment, economic system and social structure of Japan In 894, however, one hundred years after the founding of Heian-kyo. they came to an abrupt end Japan broke off all diplomatic and cultural relations with China shortly before the collapse of the T'ang dynasty

This simultaneously marked the beginning of the third phase of the acculturation process, which reached its climax approximately a century later with Japan's complete assimilation of Chinese values and forms

Pure-Land paradise garden of Byodo-m Temple. Kyoto, seen from the soutfi-easf The right angles of the Hoodo, the Phoenix Hall built in W52, are reflected m the man-made water-lily pond This contrast between the right angle and the irregular forms of cultivated nature expresses the aesthetic principle underlying the garden as a whole