Kisetsu On living in tune with the seasons
The "Tale of Genji" represents a pinnacle of indigenous Japanese prose-writing It was composed just after 1000 by Shikibu Murasaki, a lady-in-waiting. The novel's heroine, who bears the same name as the authoress, supplies both a wealth of observations on elegant Heian court society and astonishingly detailed accounts of the palace gardens and their (unctions - not least as a setting for romantic encounters.
Japanese art historians have summarized the garden of the Heian period as chisen shuyu teien, which translates literally as "pond-sprmg-boating garden", in other words a garden with a pond whose waters are fed by a spring or garden stream, and which is designed to be enjoyed by boat. If we turn to Chapter 24 of the "Tale of Genji"26, we find a description of a boating party in Murasaki's spring garden which aptly illuminates this concept:
"Numbers of (Murasaki's) young women who were thought likely to enjoy such an outing were therefore rowed out over the south lake, which ran from Murasaki's south-west quarter to her south-east quarter, with a hillock separating the two. The boats left from the hillock. Murasaki's women were stationed in the fishing pavilion at the boundary between the two quarters.
The dragon and phoenix boats were brilliantly decorated in the Chinese fashion. The little pages and helmsmen, their hair still bound up in the page-boy manner, wore lively Chinese dress, and everything about the arrangements was deliciously exotic, to add to the novelty, for the empress's women, of this southeast quarter. The boats pulled up below a cliff at an island cove, where the smallest of the hanging rocks was like a detail of a painting. The branches caught in mists from either side were like a tapestry, and far away in Murasaki's private gardens a willow trailed its branches in a deepening green and the cherry blossoms were rich and sensuous. In other places they had fallen, but here they were still at their smiling best, and above the galleries wisteria was beginning to send forth its lavender. Yellow kerria reflected on the lake as if about to join its own image. Waterfowl swam past in amiable pairs, and flew in and out with twigs in their bills, and one longed to paint the mandarin ducks as they coursed about on the water."
From this point on they composed poem after poem in an attempt to capture the beauty of the moment. Once back indoors the party continued through the night, with poetry and music-making. Then: "Morning came. From behind her fences, Akikonomu listened to the morning birds and feared that her autumn garden had lost the contest."
The gardens of the Heian period were elegant and colourful, and the festivities held within them were infused with a joyous, light-hearted spirit. They inspired their visitors to express their love of nature through poetry and music. Murasaki's description of the boating party is full of references to the natural signs of spring, and this fascination with the passing seasons is a thread which can be found running through the diaries, novels, poems and paintings of the Heian period as a whole. Anyone who has lived in Japan - and particularly Kyoto - for any length of time will know that spring and autumn are the two seasons closest to the Japanese heart: spring because it is the season in which nature awakens to new life in a burst of fresh and strong colours, autumn for its more subdued rush of yellows, reds and purples and its note of sadness.
Prince Genji tells his favourite lady-in-waiting Akiko-numi, whose name literally means "lover of autumn": "But aside from house and family, it is nature that gives me the most pleasure, the changes of the seasons, the blossoms and leaves of autumn and spring, the shifting patterns of the skies. People have always debated the relative merits of the groves of spring and fields of autumn, and had trouble coming to a conclusion. I have been told that in China nothing is held to surpass the brocades of spring, but in the poetry of our own country the preference would seem to be for the wistful notes of autumn. I watch them come and go and must allow each its points, and in the end am unable to decide between song of bird and hue of flower. I go further within the limits allowed by my narrow gardens. I have sought to bring in what I can of the seasons, the flowering trees of spring and the flowering grasses of autumn, and the humming of insects that would go unnoticed in the wilds. This is what I offer for your pleasure. Which of the two, autumn and spring, is your own favourite?"
These and the following passages on Murasaki's spring garden and Akikonomu's autumn garden suggest firstly that Prince Genji saw his courtly ladies as personifications of the qualities of their favourite gardens and, secondly, that he had built his palace in the form of a mandala, with the four gardens of his four favourite ladies corresponding to the cardinal point appropriate to their season:
"The hills were high in the south-east quarter where spring-blossoming trees and bushes were planted in large numbers. The lake was most ingeniously designed. Among the planting in the forward parts of the garden were cinquefoil pines, maples, cherries, wisteria, kerria and rock azaleas, most of them trees and shrubs whose season was spring. Touches of autumn, too, were scattered through the groves. In Akikonomu's garden (occupying the south-west quarter) the plantings, on hills left from the old garden, were chosen for rich autumn colours. Clear spring water went singing off into the distance, over rocks designed to enhance the music. There was a waterfall, and the whole expanse was like an autumn moor. Since it was now autumn, the garden was a wild profusion of autumn flowers and leaves, such as to shame the hills of Oi.
In the north-east quarter there was a cool natural spring and the plans had the summer sun in mind. In the forward parts of the garden the wind through thickets of Chinese bamboo would be cool in the summer, and the trees were deep and mysterious as mountain groves. There was a hedge of mayflower, and there were oranges to remind the lady of days long gone. There were wild carnations and roses and gentians and a few spring and autumn flowers as well. A part of the quarter was fenced off for equestrian grounds. Since the fifth month would be its liveliest time, there were irises along the lake. On the far side were stables where the finest of horses would be kept.
And finally the north-west quarter: beyond artificial hillocks to the north were rows of warehouses, screened off by pines which would be beautiful in new falls of snow. The chrysanthemum hedge would bloom in the morning frosts of early winter, when also a grove of 'mother oaks' would display its best hues. And in among the deep groves were mountain trees which one would have been hard put to identify."
I am tempted to conclude from the above lines that the rules of cjeomancy governed not only the design of the capital and the imperial palace but even the gardens of the nobility, and that these, too, were intended to represent a sort of mandala. an image of the universe. The four gardens described m the "Tale of Genji" attained their fullest glory in their "own" season; m relation to the mam palace, each faced the direction to which it is assigned within the chart of the five evolutive phases. The names of the gardens, indicating their geographical positions, no doubt acted as a helpful means of orientation within the labyrinthine palace complex.
Wybe Kuitert has collected sufficient literary evidence to conclude that the idea of allocating individual gardens to specific cardinal points was not merely "literary fiction but actual practice" in the design of Heian palaces."
The four seasons and their various charms are the subject of constant reference in the novels and diaries of the Heian period, and much Heian poetry is hinged on Makura kotoba, "Pillow Words" which include proverbial descriptions of the seasons. Daily life in the palaces of the nobility was similarly enacted amidst images of the rhythms of nature, both outdoors in gardens and indoors in shiki-e, the "four seasons paintings' executed m the indigenous yamato style.
The palaces of the Hetan period employed a form of post-and-lintel architecture which contained very few permanent partitions and which could be opened onto the garden. Sliding screens and free-standing, movable panels were used to partition off individual areas as required. These were often decorated with scenes from nature, such as the four seasons, seasonal festivals and their locations.
Saburo lenaga summarizes this Heian immersion m nature in the following passage: "The natural was always so interwoven with human life that, in point of fact, the pamtmg ended up as the depiction of recurring seasonal events, some religious, some not. The starting-point for events was the special connection between the unfolding of the seasons and the unfolding of human life."*'" The Heian period saw man as one with nature.
Mono no aware: sensitivity towards beings
The emotional - and not the intellectual or religious -attitude of the Heian nobility towards nature can be summarized in the almost untranslatable concept of mono no aware, sensitivity towards beings. According to Ivan Morris, the term aware occurs exactly 1018 times in the "Tale of Genji'V It is the great theme of Heian aesthetics. The normal rendering of this phrase as the "emotional quality of things" fails, in my opinion, to do justice to the true meaning of the original. "Things" have no emotion. According to Heian thinking, however, rocks, flowers and trees are not simply inanimate objects, but possess their own "being" and their own sensitivity. To be sensitive to their sensitivity is a prerequisite of Heian art. And since the sense of the impermanence of all being was particularly pronounced m the Heian period, the expression mono no aware came to acquire an undercurrent of profound melancholy.
Показват се публикациите с етикет Garden Making. Показване на всички публикации
Показват се публикациите с етикет Garden Making. Показване на всички публикации
Gardens in an urban palace setting
Nothing today survives of the eighth-century dai-dam, the "great inner interior", as the palace city was originally called. The dairi, or "inner interior", as the imperial residential quarters were known, has similarly fallen victim to time. Only the shinsen-en, the "Park of Divine Springs" to the south of Nijo castle, lives on as a tiny remnant of the imperial pleasure gardens which once covered an area of 2 x 4 city blocks (260 x 520 yards). According to the historical and literary sources of the day, these pleasure gardens provided the setting for imperial poetry competitions, banquets and boating trips on the huge artificial lake. The gardens also hosted the kyokusui no en, or "Feast by the Winding Stream", a literary event highly popular amongst court nobles. Lining both banks of the winding garden stream, they would compose poems upon a seasonal subject while catching tiny cups of rice wine which were floated downstream.
Gosho, literally "the august place" the present term for the imperial palace in Kyoto is a highly-disciplined form of - originally Chinese - palace architecture. It implies a symmetrical arrangement of successive courtyards aligned along a central axis. In the Heian period this form was invoked not only for palaces but also for Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, and in particular the shrine of the Imperial Ancestors in Ise.
At the heart of the imperial living quarters lies the shishin-den, literally "the purple hall of the Emperor", a word borrowed from the seventh-century Da-ming palace complex in Changan. The present shishin-den in Kyoto is a nineteenth-century reproduction of an earlier building from the late Edo era. It employs the now-familiar armchair layout, whereby double-aisled covered corridors extend from the main building to enclose a brightly-lit nan-tei, or "south garden". Carpeted with white sand, the garden contains nothing but a mandarin tree and a cherry tree, placed at either side of the open steps leading up to the shishin-den. Fenced off from the rest of the garden behind a carefully-proportioned wooden lattice, and symmetrically positioned within this ceremonial courtyard, the two trees are treated as pieces of architecture rather than as plants in a garden.
The empty and white characteristics of the south garden in front of the shishin-den have their origins in the dual function of the early Japanese emperors as both political ruler and chief priest. South gardens were originally reserved for religious and state purposes; empty, they provided a suitable stage for the colourful court rituals borrowed from T'ang China; white, they offered a pure setting for sacred dances performed to invoke the gods.
The cosmological orientation of the whole in accordance with Chinese models is again echoed in the names given to the two side gates leading into the south garden. Thus the nikkamon, the "sunflower gate", lies at the centre of the eastern walkway, while the gekkamon, the "moonflower gate", is found on the opposite, western side. They recall the temples of the sun and moon found outside the eastern and western gates of many Chinese cities. In Japan as in China, the layout of the imperial palace and its gardens was to reflect the design of the very cosmos itself.
Providing a stark contrast to the formality and austerity of the ceremonial south garden are the tsubo-niwa, the small "inner-courtyard gardens" found amongst the rectangular arrangement of buildings north of the shishin-den. Intimate in scale, informal and unassuming in character, these are often devoted to one specific plant or plant variety.
The walled garden below the west veranda of the seiryoden, the imperial banqueting rooms, is completely flat and almost empty, containing no more than a few simple plants. Garden scholar M. Hayakawa sees this garden as the perfect expression of the Heian sense of elegance and tranquility. I believe it mirrors precisely those motifs I have described earlier as characterizing the Japanese sense of beauty: namely, the play of delicate natural form against the right angle of Japanese architecture, in this case the wooden lattice.
Expanding upon the simple beauty of the tsubo-niwa within the architectural maze of the imperial complex, another expert on Japanese gardens, Loraine Kuck, observes: "Ladies whose rooms faced these small courts were often called by the name of the flower dominating them, and this same flower was sometimes also used as a decorative motif in the rooms - stencilled or embroidered onto curtains and screens." Kuck also draws our attention to the name of Fuji-tsubo, the "Lady of the Wisteria Court" who appears in the famous "Tale of Prince Genji"
The Heian nobility, equally concerned to emulate the Chinese fashions of the day, modelled their own gardens on those of the imperial palace. The south gardens of these noble residences no longer consisted solely of empty, sandy surfaces, however; they were joined instead by elaborate gardens laid out to the south, featuring large ponds with one or more islands connected by arched bridges.
The architectural style which dominated the early Heian period became known as shinden after the main hall which lay at the centre of palace complexes. It is now generally assumed that the noble residences of this period were highly symmetrical in their design and occupied a site measuring about 130 x 130 yards (one city block). Two suiwata-dono, open corridors, led from the main hall (shinden) to two symmetrical side halls (tainoya). From there, two covered walkways led southwards towards the pond to a tsuri-dono, a fishing pavilion, on one side and an izumi-dono, a spring pavilion, on the other. These two pavilions stood right on the water's edge. Halfway along the covered walkways, chumon - middle gates - gave access to the inner courtyard. The ceremonial southern entrance gate found in the imperial palace has here disappeared.
Japanese scholar Sawada Nadan, an architectural historian of the late Edo era, was the first to attempt a hypothetical reconstruction of a noble residence in the Shinden style of the early Heian period. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the drawing published in his 1842 "Kaoku zakko" in reversed form, since it thus better fits the description of the winding garden stream found in the Sakutei-ki. The Sakutei-ki dates from the latter part of the eleventh century and is the oldest surviving text on garden architecture. It contains the clearest description of the first great prototype of Japanese garden: "To ensure good fortune, water must flow in from the east, pass beneath the floor of the house and flow out to the south-west. For in this way the waters of the Blue Dragon will wash away all the evil spirits from the house and garden and carry them to the White Tiger." As already stated, geoman-tic principles were applied not only to the design of cities as a whole, but also to the palaces and gardens within them. The palace complex was also to be a mi-crocosmic reflection of the universe. The language of the Sakutei-ki is full of references to the four heavenly animals and their significance for the building of a house. Thus it writes: "The garden stream should flow into the shinden area from the east; it should then be directed south and should leave the garden flowing westwards. Even where the water has to come in from the north, it should be allowed to flow eastwards and then exit by the south-west. According to an ancient sutra, the land enclosed within a river bend should be considered the belly of the dragon. To build a house on that belly is to be lucky. But to build a house on the back of the dragon is to invite misfortune."
By the end of the Heian period, however, the highly formalized, symmetrical architecture of early Heian palaces had been replaced by a freer and more asymmetric style of building. Whether this transition reflected a respect for natural form, or simply an inborn Japanese dislike of symmetry, must remain a matter for speculation. In the new style of the late Heian period, the buildings composing the palace complex no longer stand isolated and independent, but instead flow each into the next. Japan hereby entered the phase of complete assimilation of the Chinese models it had imported in the past, one which Professor Teiji Itoh has termed a phase of "splendid misinterpretations".
On the basis of careful analyses of scroll-paintings, albeit of slightly later origin, historians have been able to reconstruct both the Tosanjo-den palace belonging to the Fujiwara clan, and the Hojuji palace built by Fujiwara no Tanemitsu (942-992). Their reconstructions suggest that the Fujiwara built palaces of great splendour and impressive stze, running the length of two city blocks from north to south Emperor Goshirakawa chose Hojuji palace as the home of his retirement.
The Fujtwara ("plain of wistena") clan effectively ruled Japan from the mid-ninth to the late eleventh century from their positions as impenal regents and chief ministers. They guaranteed their continuing influence at court by ensuring that every emperor was the son of a Fujiwara mother. Thanks to their political power and generous patronage of the arts, this period of almost two hundred years has become known as the Fujiwara era.
The Fujiwara continued to design their palaces within the design framework of the "armchair", however asymmetrical the overall composition might now appear Their gardens, too, were illustrations of that first great Japanese prototype, featuring a pond with one or more islands, its waters fed by a garden stream entenng and leaving the grounds in accordance with ancient geomantic rules The Tosanjoden palace gardens had three islands and one fishing pavilion to the west, while those of Hojuji-den contained two islands and two pavilions, one at each end of the projecting covered walkways. The eastern pavilion, built upon a cruciform ground plan unique m Japanese architectural history, stood not on the banks of the pond but on one of its islands, and thus represented a further step away from the clear symmetry of the Shinden style.
In both cases the mam hall, the shinden, opens directly onto an empty area of white sand, the site of regular ceremonies and special festivities held on the occasion of imperial visits. Both, too, have garden streams which wind their way through sparsely-planted, slightly undulating ground, and along whose banks that popular banquet of poetry and rice wine, the kyokusui no en, was once held On such festive occasions the islands often provided the location for a gaku-ya, a stage for dancers and musicians.
Gosho, literally "the august place" the present term for the imperial palace in Kyoto is a highly-disciplined form of - originally Chinese - palace architecture. It implies a symmetrical arrangement of successive courtyards aligned along a central axis. In the Heian period this form was invoked not only for palaces but also for Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, and in particular the shrine of the Imperial Ancestors in Ise.
At the heart of the imperial living quarters lies the shishin-den, literally "the purple hall of the Emperor", a word borrowed from the seventh-century Da-ming palace complex in Changan. The present shishin-den in Kyoto is a nineteenth-century reproduction of an earlier building from the late Edo era. It employs the now-familiar armchair layout, whereby double-aisled covered corridors extend from the main building to enclose a brightly-lit nan-tei, or "south garden". Carpeted with white sand, the garden contains nothing but a mandarin tree and a cherry tree, placed at either side of the open steps leading up to the shishin-den. Fenced off from the rest of the garden behind a carefully-proportioned wooden lattice, and symmetrically positioned within this ceremonial courtyard, the two trees are treated as pieces of architecture rather than as plants in a garden.
The empty and white characteristics of the south garden in front of the shishin-den have their origins in the dual function of the early Japanese emperors as both political ruler and chief priest. South gardens were originally reserved for religious and state purposes; empty, they provided a suitable stage for the colourful court rituals borrowed from T'ang China; white, they offered a pure setting for sacred dances performed to invoke the gods.
The cosmological orientation of the whole in accordance with Chinese models is again echoed in the names given to the two side gates leading into the south garden. Thus the nikkamon, the "sunflower gate", lies at the centre of the eastern walkway, while the gekkamon, the "moonflower gate", is found on the opposite, western side. They recall the temples of the sun and moon found outside the eastern and western gates of many Chinese cities. In Japan as in China, the layout of the imperial palace and its gardens was to reflect the design of the very cosmos itself.
Providing a stark contrast to the formality and austerity of the ceremonial south garden are the tsubo-niwa, the small "inner-courtyard gardens" found amongst the rectangular arrangement of buildings north of the shishin-den. Intimate in scale, informal and unassuming in character, these are often devoted to one specific plant or plant variety.
The walled garden below the west veranda of the seiryoden, the imperial banqueting rooms, is completely flat and almost empty, containing no more than a few simple plants. Garden scholar M. Hayakawa sees this garden as the perfect expression of the Heian sense of elegance and tranquility. I believe it mirrors precisely those motifs I have described earlier as characterizing the Japanese sense of beauty: namely, the play of delicate natural form against the right angle of Japanese architecture, in this case the wooden lattice.
Expanding upon the simple beauty of the tsubo-niwa within the architectural maze of the imperial complex, another expert on Japanese gardens, Loraine Kuck, observes: "Ladies whose rooms faced these small courts were often called by the name of the flower dominating them, and this same flower was sometimes also used as a decorative motif in the rooms - stencilled or embroidered onto curtains and screens." Kuck also draws our attention to the name of Fuji-tsubo, the "Lady of the Wisteria Court" who appears in the famous "Tale of Prince Genji"
The Heian nobility, equally concerned to emulate the Chinese fashions of the day, modelled their own gardens on those of the imperial palace. The south gardens of these noble residences no longer consisted solely of empty, sandy surfaces, however; they were joined instead by elaborate gardens laid out to the south, featuring large ponds with one or more islands connected by arched bridges.
The architectural style which dominated the early Heian period became known as shinden after the main hall which lay at the centre of palace complexes. It is now generally assumed that the noble residences of this period were highly symmetrical in their design and occupied a site measuring about 130 x 130 yards (one city block). Two suiwata-dono, open corridors, led from the main hall (shinden) to two symmetrical side halls (tainoya). From there, two covered walkways led southwards towards the pond to a tsuri-dono, a fishing pavilion, on one side and an izumi-dono, a spring pavilion, on the other. These two pavilions stood right on the water's edge. Halfway along the covered walkways, chumon - middle gates - gave access to the inner courtyard. The ceremonial southern entrance gate found in the imperial palace has here disappeared.
Japanese scholar Sawada Nadan, an architectural historian of the late Edo era, was the first to attempt a hypothetical reconstruction of a noble residence in the Shinden style of the early Heian period. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the drawing published in his 1842 "Kaoku zakko" in reversed form, since it thus better fits the description of the winding garden stream found in the Sakutei-ki. The Sakutei-ki dates from the latter part of the eleventh century and is the oldest surviving text on garden architecture. It contains the clearest description of the first great prototype of Japanese garden: "To ensure good fortune, water must flow in from the east, pass beneath the floor of the house and flow out to the south-west. For in this way the waters of the Blue Dragon will wash away all the evil spirits from the house and garden and carry them to the White Tiger." As already stated, geoman-tic principles were applied not only to the design of cities as a whole, but also to the palaces and gardens within them. The palace complex was also to be a mi-crocosmic reflection of the universe. The language of the Sakutei-ki is full of references to the four heavenly animals and their significance for the building of a house. Thus it writes: "The garden stream should flow into the shinden area from the east; it should then be directed south and should leave the garden flowing westwards. Even where the water has to come in from the north, it should be allowed to flow eastwards and then exit by the south-west. According to an ancient sutra, the land enclosed within a river bend should be considered the belly of the dragon. To build a house on that belly is to be lucky. But to build a house on the back of the dragon is to invite misfortune."
By the end of the Heian period, however, the highly formalized, symmetrical architecture of early Heian palaces had been replaced by a freer and more asymmetric style of building. Whether this transition reflected a respect for natural form, or simply an inborn Japanese dislike of symmetry, must remain a matter for speculation. In the new style of the late Heian period, the buildings composing the palace complex no longer stand isolated and independent, but instead flow each into the next. Japan hereby entered the phase of complete assimilation of the Chinese models it had imported in the past, one which Professor Teiji Itoh has termed a phase of "splendid misinterpretations".
On the basis of careful analyses of scroll-paintings, albeit of slightly later origin, historians have been able to reconstruct both the Tosanjo-den palace belonging to the Fujiwara clan, and the Hojuji palace built by Fujiwara no Tanemitsu (942-992). Their reconstructions suggest that the Fujiwara built palaces of great splendour and impressive stze, running the length of two city blocks from north to south Emperor Goshirakawa chose Hojuji palace as the home of his retirement.
The Fujtwara ("plain of wistena") clan effectively ruled Japan from the mid-ninth to the late eleventh century from their positions as impenal regents and chief ministers. They guaranteed their continuing influence at court by ensuring that every emperor was the son of a Fujiwara mother. Thanks to their political power and generous patronage of the arts, this period of almost two hundred years has become known as the Fujiwara era.
The Fujiwara continued to design their palaces within the design framework of the "armchair", however asymmetrical the overall composition might now appear Their gardens, too, were illustrations of that first great Japanese prototype, featuring a pond with one or more islands, its waters fed by a garden stream entenng and leaving the grounds in accordance with ancient geomantic rules The Tosanjoden palace gardens had three islands and one fishing pavilion to the west, while those of Hojuji-den contained two islands and two pavilions, one at each end of the projecting covered walkways. The eastern pavilion, built upon a cruciform ground plan unique m Japanese architectural history, stood not on the banks of the pond but on one of its islands, and thus represented a further step away from the clear symmetry of the Shinden style.
In both cases the mam hall, the shinden, opens directly onto an empty area of white sand, the site of regular ceremonies and special festivities held on the occasion of imperial visits. Both, too, have garden streams which wind their way through sparsely-planted, slightly undulating ground, and along whose banks that popular banquet of poetry and rice wine, the kyokusui no en, was once held On such festive occasions the islands often provided the location for a gaku-ya, a stage for dancers and musicians.
Sakutei-ki: "The Classic of Garden-Making"
The Sakutei-ki, the classic manual of garden architec ture, provides another inexhaustible fund of informa tion regarding Heian attitudes towards nature and gar den design. Japanese scholars consider it probable that the treatise was written in the latter half of the elev enth century by Tachibana no Toshitsuna, a son of Fujiwara no Yonmichi. the builder of Byodo-m temple This attribution would make the author not a profes sional gardener but a member of the Heian nobility, and probably one who avidly followed - and perhaps actively oversaw - the creation of many a palace gar den. The Sakutei-h appears to be simply a compilation of the contemporary rules of garden-making Whether these rules were already common knowledge and found in other books now lost to us. whether they were passed from teacher to pupil as part of an oral tradition, or whether they were stnctly secret, remains a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, the book by Tachibana originally consisted of two scrolls and bore the more appropriate title of Senzai hisho. "Secret Dis courses on Gardens".
The colophon of the scroll, a tailpiece which tradi tionally identifies the writer and place of composition, reads: "A foolish old man. This is a very precious treas ure; it should be kept stnctly secret'." There is reason
to believe, however, that this colophon was only added much later, when the knowledge contained in the scroll had acquired commercial value for a Japanese nobility which had lost most of its power to the samu rai warrior class.
At one point in the Sa'kutei-ki the author himself ad mits: "I have recorded here, without attempting to judge what is good or bad, what I have heard over the years concerning the erecting of rocks The priest En no Enjan acquired the secrets of rock-setting by mutual transmission. I am in possession of his scriptures Even though I have studied and understood its mam princi ples, its aesthetic meaning is so inexhaustible that I frequently fail to grasp it Nor is anyone still alive to day who knows all there is to know about the subject By taking natural scenery of mountains and water, but forgetting the rules and taboos of garden architecture, I fear we will end up with gardens upon which we have forcibly imposed our own forms "
In Heian times, "mutual transmission", like "secret transmission", probably meant simply the passing of knowledge between members of the nobility and Bud dhist priests, the two classes of Heian society actively involved in the study and practice of the arts, and par ticularly garden design Furthermore, "secret" in a Buddhist context did not mean that a text was physically hidden away, but rather that a "key" was necessary to its understanding This "key" would be transmitted orally from master to disciple only when the latter was deemed worthy to receive it
The Sakutei-ki discusses garden art and architectural details within the context of the Shinden-style palace. Sadly it contains no illustrations. The book opens with an introduction to the general principles of garden de sign, and then proceeds to describe the five types of garden which may be laid out along the banks of ponds and streams. It distinguishes between eight types of island and offers some practical advice on ac tual construction. The author further identifies nine ba sic types of waterfall, discusses the various possibilities of garden streams, the different forms of rock settings, and concludes with a jumbled assortment of orally-transmitted dos and don'ts.
The colophon of the scroll, a tailpiece which tradi tionally identifies the writer and place of composition, reads: "A foolish old man. This is a very precious treas ure; it should be kept stnctly secret'." There is reason
to believe, however, that this colophon was only added much later, when the knowledge contained in the scroll had acquired commercial value for a Japanese nobility which had lost most of its power to the samu rai warrior class.
At one point in the Sa'kutei-ki the author himself ad mits: "I have recorded here, without attempting to judge what is good or bad, what I have heard over the years concerning the erecting of rocks The priest En no Enjan acquired the secrets of rock-setting by mutual transmission. I am in possession of his scriptures Even though I have studied and understood its mam princi ples, its aesthetic meaning is so inexhaustible that I frequently fail to grasp it Nor is anyone still alive to day who knows all there is to know about the subject By taking natural scenery of mountains and water, but forgetting the rules and taboos of garden architecture, I fear we will end up with gardens upon which we have forcibly imposed our own forms "
In Heian times, "mutual transmission", like "secret transmission", probably meant simply the passing of knowledge between members of the nobility and Bud dhist priests, the two classes of Heian society actively involved in the study and practice of the arts, and par ticularly garden design Furthermore, "secret" in a Buddhist context did not mean that a text was physically hidden away, but rather that a "key" was necessary to its understanding This "key" would be transmitted orally from master to disciple only when the latter was deemed worthy to receive it
The Sakutei-ki discusses garden art and architectural details within the context of the Shinden-style palace. Sadly it contains no illustrations. The book opens with an introduction to the general principles of garden de sign, and then proceeds to describe the five types of garden which may be laid out along the banks of ponds and streams. It distinguishes between eight types of island and offers some practical advice on ac tual construction. The author further identifies nine ba sic types of waterfall, discusses the various possibilities of garden streams, the different forms of rock settings, and concludes with a jumbled assortment of orally-transmitted dos and don'ts.
Абонамент за:
Публикации (Atom)