The Muromachi era

In 1333 Emperor Godaigo succeeded in overthrowing the Kamakura shogunate and restoring imperial rule. After a mere three years, however, Ashikaga Takauji, a member of the Minamoto clan, established a new military government in Kyoto itself.

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, grandson of Takauji, moved his shogunate headquarters to the Muromachi district of north-east Kyoto. Thus the period of Ashikaga rule also became known as Muromachi bakafи, "Muromachi feudalism". The palace which Yoshimitsu subsequently built in the Muromachi district in 1378 was popularly known as Hana no gosho, the "Flower Palace", because of its countless numbers of cherry trees. Its buildings and gardens, with a large pond, islands, bridges and various pavilions, were indebted to the traditional Shinden style of the late Heian era. Sadly, however, neither the "Flower Palace" nor the palaces of the Ashikaga nobility were to survive the Onin civil wars (1467-1477). The present imperial palace in Kyoto stands on approximately the same site as one such palace of Muromachi times.

The Muromachi era was to last some two and a half centuries, from 1336 to 1573. It was a period plagued by constant internal conflicts and civil wars, reducing Kyoto to ashes by 1477. At the same time, however, the era proved one of the most creative in Japan's history, giving birth to some of the greatest forms of Japanese culture. The tea ceremony, Noh theatre, landscape painting, Shoin architecture and the dry landscape garden, all innovations of the Muromachi era, have since come to represent traditional Japanese culture as such. Equally remarkable is the fact that the culturally most important phases in Muromachi history are named after the gardens created by the shoguns of the day.

Thus the Kitayama epoch derives its name from the northern hills in which Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358 — 1408) created the garden famous for its Golden Pavilion, while the Higashiyama epoch refers to the eastern hills in which Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490) built a pond garden similarly renowned for its Silver Pavilion.

The great new garden prototype to emerge during the Muromachi era is the kare-sansui, the dry landscape garden. Its austere architecture reflects the tastes of the Zen priests and samurai for whom it was principally created. It is designed not as a pleasure garden, but as an object of contemplation to be viewed from fixed vantage points.