Just as the "Tale of Genji" transports us back to the cultured world of the Heian court and allows us to glimpse the delight with which the privileged classes saw nature, so the "Tale of Heike", a Kamakura war epic, captures the the mood of the tumultuous age which followed - the age of the warrior.
"The Gion Temple bell echoes the evanescence of all. The colour of the flowers of the Saraso Tree discloses the law of the fall of the prosperous. The proud last not long, but are like a spring night's dream. The mighty soon pass just like dust before the wind.
The "Tale of Heike" is a lively account of the decline of the Taira clan who once dominated the imperial court. They suffered final defeat at the hands of the Minamoto clan, whose power bases lay in the provinces. In the east of Japan, far from the imperial capital of Kyoto, commander-in-chief Minamoto Yoritomo succeeded in setting up an independent military government, or bakafu. In 1185 he founded his capital, Kamakura, from where he subsequently ruled as Sho-gun. Although Kyoto remained the official capital of Japan for another hundred and fifty years, the now politically powerless emperor was reduced to no more than a figurehead.
Rocks in the sand
The gardens of the Kamakura and Muromachi eras are dearly indebted to the second large wave of Chinese influence on Japanese culture, and an particular to Zen Buddhism and the landscape painting of the Sung and Yuan dynasties. The age finds its garden prototype m the scenery of the kare-sansui. the small-scale dry landscape garden attached to and bordered by Shom-style architecture Such gardens are designed to be contem-plated, like a painting, from a number of fixed vantage pants in the Kamakura era. gardens were laid out by special priests - called ishitateso - from the esoteric Shmgon sect, who thereby effectively acted as semiprofessional garden-makers. Their role was later taken over by Zen priests During the Muromachi era. kawaramono. lowclass "nverbank workers", slowly rose to the status of professional garden designers They were held in high esteem by the Ashikaga sho-guns Although the materials employed tn the gardens of the Kamakura and Muromachi eras may still be called "natural", their final forms increasingly abridged nature almost to the point of abstraction The gardens of the Kamakura and Muromachi eras thus imitate the inner essence of nature, not its outward forms.
Japanese garden archetypes
The Japanese landscape - Shintoism - Hindu cosmology - Taoist myth -Buddhist faith - Triadic compositions
Shinto beliefs: sacred archetypes
Permanent shrine buildings appear relatively late in Shintoism; they probably arose during the fifth and sixth centuries AD, when "nature Shinto" slowly entered its second phase of "shnne Shinto". Such was the formal clarity and simplicity of the earliest sanctuanes and the universality of their ritual imagery that they produced specific archetypes of holy site and sacred nte m the collective Japanese subconscious, archetypes which have survived the passage of time and whth continue to cast a spell over foreign tourists even today.
Shinto beliefs: sacred archetypes
Permanent shrine buildings appear relatively late in Shintoism; they probably arose during the fifth and sixth centuries AD, when "nature Shinto" slowly entered its second phase of "shnne Shinto". Such was the formal clarity and simplicity of the earliest sanctuanes and the universality of their ritual imagery that they produced specific archetypes of holy site and sacred nte m the collective Japanese subconscious, archetypes which have survived the passage of time and whth continue to cast a spell over foreign tourists even today.
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
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
Genji Monogatari: "The Tale of Genji"
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.
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.
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.
Sino - Japanese geomancy as holistic design theory
As one of the - what we would now view as - unorthodox sciences practised in China, geomancy was most generally known as feng-shui. literally "wind-water", or simply as ti-li, "land patterns" In Japan this same body of knowledge was called chiso, "land physi ognomy", or kaso. "house physiognomy". Geomancy seeks to determine the most favourable design and location of human artefacts - a house, a grave, even a whole city - within the natural or man-made environment
Smo-Japanese geomancy is based on a holistic view of the cosmos, in which man is seen as an integral part of nature and its energy fields. It correlates geophysical factors - geographical land forms, climate, magnetic fields - and astral phenomena - movements of the stars, solstices, lunar phases - with the psychosomatic welfare of the human being We shall be examining this science in some depth not only because it differs considerably from the indigenous Shinto geomancy discussed earlier in this book, but because it was to prove highly significant for Japanese garden design Indeed, it influenced not only the positioning of artefacts (including entire gardens) in geographical space, but even governed the movement of human beings m time During the reign of Emperor Temmu, a central government organ was created within the imperial city to supervise Smo-Japanese geomancy This was the Ommyo-ryo, the Office of Yin and Yang For all its superstitious overtones, geomancy reflects a profound awareness of the ecological relationship between man and the forces of nature.
The logic of Chinese geomancy, of feng-shui, is not easily grasped by the Western mind. Like other branches of the traditional Chinese natural sciences, it employs methods of cognition which are best described as inductive, synthetic or synchronistic, if we may borrow from the terminology of Porkert and Jung. Such procedures are foreign to the Western mind, which employs causal, analytic and diachronistic processes of thought.
To the uninitiated, Smo-Japanese geomancy appears to consist of a vast collection of rules and precepts whose roots can ultimately be traced both to human fears - fear of the uncontrollable forces of nature, fear of hostile neighbours - and human greed. But it also conceals a fundamental acknowledgement of the interdependence of all levels of reality, both natural and man-made. It recognizes, too, the energetic quality underlying all reality - a concept unknown to the Western mind until the advent of modern physics.
The Chinese geomancy introduced into Japan was itself a complex amalgam of two schools of thought, one based on more rational cosmology, the other intuitive. The chief instrument of the former was the geo-mancer's "compass", a condensed image of the cosmos in its spatial and temporal relationships - a sort of Chinese mandala.
The Chinese geomantic compass was frequently subdivided into three levels - Heaven, Earth and Man.
It thus reflected the tripartite division of the Chinese universe. In line with ancient Chinese speculation on the cosmos, the compass shows heaven as round and the earth as square. There is a magnetic needle at its centre. Concentric rings circling this needle relate the concepts of Yin and Yang, which express the polarity of all natural phenomena, to the concept of go-gyo, the five evolutive phases of Chinese natural science, to the eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams of the l-Ching and to the cycles of the Chinese solar-lunar calendar. These correlations apply equally to outer nature and inner man. Practical geomancy might thus be described as a kind of acupuncture applied to nature, and acupuncture as as kind of geomancy applied to the human body. In view of this holistic understanding of the world, it is not supnsing that the design of Japanese gardens was also subject to the dictates of geomancy.
Perhaps the most striking consequence of this cosmology was the fact that the gardens, cities and palaces of China, and subsequently Japan, were all oriented due north. The Chinese believed that all power was derived from a non-personal Heaven and was transmitted to earth via the emperor, until he grew too weak to perform his celestial mandate. Just as the stars and constellations in the sky appeared to rotate around the Pole Star - referred to in ancient Chinese texts as the "Great Heavenly Emperor" -, so on earth all state and religious affairs revolved around the figure of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. He was the axis mundi of the earth just as the Pole Star was that of the firmament. Since the Pole Star lies almost due north, the itually correct position of the emperor was accepted as also being either to the north or at the centre of his capital and palace complex. This cosmological axiom led the Japanese to orient their capital cities, palaces, noble residences, gardens and even the shrine of the Imperial Ancestors in Ise all towards the north.
At the centre of the intuitive school of Chinese geomancy lay the search for an ideal site upon which to build an ancestrial burial vault, a house or even an entire town in harmony with the complex configurations of nature already existing or made by man. The Chinese visualized such ideal locations in the form of a comfortable armchair, its "back" a mountain and its "armrests" hills. In certain cases the "back" might be provided by artificial enclosures such as walls, hedges and buildings. The Chinese word for such an ideal site isxue, which means "lair", "den" or "cave", thereby emphasizing its protective function. Significantly, too, the same ideogram represents an acupuncture point in both the Chinese and Japanese languages.
Ideally, the "armchair" will be open and sloping towards the south, and flanked by mountains or buildings on its three remaining sides. These specifications are met both by the old capital of Heian-kyo, which is located within the broad Yamashiro basin (yamashiro literally means "mountain castle") and by the dairi, the imperial palace within the city itself.
Unlike the cosmological school, however, with its geomantic compass, the more intuitive school had no technical aids to fall back on. Locating ideal sites required instead an intuitive feel for what the Chinese callki, and what M. Porkert translates as "configurative energy", the energy flow within a complex natural or man-made configuration. An intuitive feel for this energy flow could only be acquired through practical training under the supervision of an experienced geomancer.
It is interesting to note that this same concept of ki is employed by traditional Chinese medicine, both in diagnosis and treatment. This and other points of similarity have led to the suggestion that acupuncture may have developed out of the historically older science of geomancy. Many of the names assigned to acupuncture points make clear references to geographic and topological features - "bubbling spring", "sea of energy", "small swamp", "bending pond", "inner garden", "outer hill", "receiving mountain" and more besides.
According to the formal school of geomancy, a location is characterized in terms of a dragon. The dragon's "belly" thereby represents the most auspicious site. The contours of the dragon's body are described by mountain ranges and winding rivers, which also represent the components of Yin and Yang. As mentioned earlier, the word for "landscape" - adopted into the Japanese from the original Chinese - is san-sui, which means literally "mountain-water". This conceptual and visual differentiation is utterly lost in translation. San-sui means the polarity of mountain and water and is one of the most important metaphysical concepts inspiring the formal language of Sino-Japanese garden architecture and its blood-brother, painting. The geomantic, or better, topomantic location of Heian-kyo is said to have been selected with regard to the mythological heavenly animals residing in the four "corners" of the universe. As writings dating from as far back as the Han dynasty reveal, it was believed that these animals, like all heavenly phenomena, manifested themselves on earth. Thus the Azure Dragon supposedly lived in a mountain stream in the east, the region of morning and spring. The home of the White Tiger lay in the mountains of the west, the region of evening and autumn. Morning and spring thereby represent the time of ascending Yang, while evening and autumn represent the period of ascending Yin. The Black Tortoise was thought to dwell in the mountains of the north, the direction of midnight and winter, while the Red Bird resided in the plains of the south, the direction of noon and summer.
Behind this notion of the four heavenly animals lies the ancient Chinese system of inductive correlations, known as wu-xing in Chinese and go-дуо in Japanese. Long translated as "five elements", the concept has more recently been rendered as "five activities" or "five evolutive phases". This system originated in the fourth century BC and existed alongside the traditional Chinese notions of Yin and Yang. As the latter represented an understanding of the universe in terms of polar opposites, so wu-xing proposed an equally dynamic interpretation of all reality in terms of five phases. These phases were symbolized by the ideograms for earth, wood, fire, metal and water. As shown in the diagram on page 43, the earth lies at the centre. The four segments of the circle correspond to the four cardinal points, to which are assigned wood (east), metal (west), water (north) and fire (south). Each of these go-дуо elements is attributed its own colour: earth is represented as yellow, wood as green, metal as white, water as black and fire as red. As visible in the diagram, these elements are part of a five-stage sequence of concentric circles, and are followed by rings containing the five main bodily organs, five human emotions, the four seasons and four times of day, until finally arriving at the four mythological animals. Everything under the sun found its place within these five stages of transformation, from the five planets and five basic types of animal to the elements of inner man: the five tastes, five voices and five major organs, which in turn correspond to five emotions - anger, joy, sorrow, terror and thoughtful reflection.
This five-phase system of correspondences thus constitutes both a macrocosmograph and a psychogram. It creates continuous cross-references between the outer world of nature and the inner world of man. Even today, the many Chinese pharmacies still practising at a local level in Japan will invariably have on display a chart of these correspondences. A further indication of the importance of this system may be seen in the fact that both the city and gardens of Heian-kyo were laid out in the form of Chinese mandalas, and can thus be interpreted as microcosmic replicas of the universe.
The ancient Japanese belief that evil spirits always come from the north-east, from the ki-mon, the Devil's Gate, probably had its roots in a natural phenomenon: in China and Japan, the bitterly cold winter winds come from the north-east. China furthermore suffered barbarian attacks from this same direction throughout its history, while the hostile and militant tribes who populated the north-eastern regions of Japan were only finally subdued by the Yamato clan. Heian-kyo was safely protected from any such "threat" by Mount Hiei, the highest peak in the armchair of mountains cradling the former Japanese capital and lying exactly north-east of the city.
The gardens of the Heian period may be found in three different types of setting. Some are contained within the palaces of the emperor and the aristocracy and thus fully subordinate to their architectural surroundings. Others are sited on the city outskirts, acting as a kind of intermediary between the urban environment and unspoilt nature. Others still adorn the main courtyards of Pure Land Buddhist temples.
Smo-Japanese geomancy is based on a holistic view of the cosmos, in which man is seen as an integral part of nature and its energy fields. It correlates geophysical factors - geographical land forms, climate, magnetic fields - and astral phenomena - movements of the stars, solstices, lunar phases - with the psychosomatic welfare of the human being We shall be examining this science in some depth not only because it differs considerably from the indigenous Shinto geomancy discussed earlier in this book, but because it was to prove highly significant for Japanese garden design Indeed, it influenced not only the positioning of artefacts (including entire gardens) in geographical space, but even governed the movement of human beings m time During the reign of Emperor Temmu, a central government organ was created within the imperial city to supervise Smo-Japanese geomancy This was the Ommyo-ryo, the Office of Yin and Yang For all its superstitious overtones, geomancy reflects a profound awareness of the ecological relationship between man and the forces of nature.
The logic of Chinese geomancy, of feng-shui, is not easily grasped by the Western mind. Like other branches of the traditional Chinese natural sciences, it employs methods of cognition which are best described as inductive, synthetic or synchronistic, if we may borrow from the terminology of Porkert and Jung. Such procedures are foreign to the Western mind, which employs causal, analytic and diachronistic processes of thought.
To the uninitiated, Smo-Japanese geomancy appears to consist of a vast collection of rules and precepts whose roots can ultimately be traced both to human fears - fear of the uncontrollable forces of nature, fear of hostile neighbours - and human greed. But it also conceals a fundamental acknowledgement of the interdependence of all levels of reality, both natural and man-made. It recognizes, too, the energetic quality underlying all reality - a concept unknown to the Western mind until the advent of modern physics.
The Chinese geomancy introduced into Japan was itself a complex amalgam of two schools of thought, one based on more rational cosmology, the other intuitive. The chief instrument of the former was the geo-mancer's "compass", a condensed image of the cosmos in its spatial and temporal relationships - a sort of Chinese mandala.
The Chinese geomantic compass was frequently subdivided into three levels - Heaven, Earth and Man.
It thus reflected the tripartite division of the Chinese universe. In line with ancient Chinese speculation on the cosmos, the compass shows heaven as round and the earth as square. There is a magnetic needle at its centre. Concentric rings circling this needle relate the concepts of Yin and Yang, which express the polarity of all natural phenomena, to the concept of go-gyo, the five evolutive phases of Chinese natural science, to the eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams of the l-Ching and to the cycles of the Chinese solar-lunar calendar. These correlations apply equally to outer nature and inner man. Practical geomancy might thus be described as a kind of acupuncture applied to nature, and acupuncture as as kind of geomancy applied to the human body. In view of this holistic understanding of the world, it is not supnsing that the design of Japanese gardens was also subject to the dictates of geomancy.
Perhaps the most striking consequence of this cosmology was the fact that the gardens, cities and palaces of China, and subsequently Japan, were all oriented due north. The Chinese believed that all power was derived from a non-personal Heaven and was transmitted to earth via the emperor, until he grew too weak to perform his celestial mandate. Just as the stars and constellations in the sky appeared to rotate around the Pole Star - referred to in ancient Chinese texts as the "Great Heavenly Emperor" -, so on earth all state and religious affairs revolved around the figure of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. He was the axis mundi of the earth just as the Pole Star was that of the firmament. Since the Pole Star lies almost due north, the itually correct position of the emperor was accepted as also being either to the north or at the centre of his capital and palace complex. This cosmological axiom led the Japanese to orient their capital cities, palaces, noble residences, gardens and even the shrine of the Imperial Ancestors in Ise all towards the north.
At the centre of the intuitive school of Chinese geomancy lay the search for an ideal site upon which to build an ancestrial burial vault, a house or even an entire town in harmony with the complex configurations of nature already existing or made by man. The Chinese visualized such ideal locations in the form of a comfortable armchair, its "back" a mountain and its "armrests" hills. In certain cases the "back" might be provided by artificial enclosures such as walls, hedges and buildings. The Chinese word for such an ideal site isxue, which means "lair", "den" or "cave", thereby emphasizing its protective function. Significantly, too, the same ideogram represents an acupuncture point in both the Chinese and Japanese languages.
Ideally, the "armchair" will be open and sloping towards the south, and flanked by mountains or buildings on its three remaining sides. These specifications are met both by the old capital of Heian-kyo, which is located within the broad Yamashiro basin (yamashiro literally means "mountain castle") and by the dairi, the imperial palace within the city itself.
Unlike the cosmological school, however, with its geomantic compass, the more intuitive school had no technical aids to fall back on. Locating ideal sites required instead an intuitive feel for what the Chinese callki, and what M. Porkert translates as "configurative energy", the energy flow within a complex natural or man-made configuration. An intuitive feel for this energy flow could only be acquired through practical training under the supervision of an experienced geomancer.
It is interesting to note that this same concept of ki is employed by traditional Chinese medicine, both in diagnosis and treatment. This and other points of similarity have led to the suggestion that acupuncture may have developed out of the historically older science of geomancy. Many of the names assigned to acupuncture points make clear references to geographic and topological features - "bubbling spring", "sea of energy", "small swamp", "bending pond", "inner garden", "outer hill", "receiving mountain" and more besides.
According to the formal school of geomancy, a location is characterized in terms of a dragon. The dragon's "belly" thereby represents the most auspicious site. The contours of the dragon's body are described by mountain ranges and winding rivers, which also represent the components of Yin and Yang. As mentioned earlier, the word for "landscape" - adopted into the Japanese from the original Chinese - is san-sui, which means literally "mountain-water". This conceptual and visual differentiation is utterly lost in translation. San-sui means the polarity of mountain and water and is one of the most important metaphysical concepts inspiring the formal language of Sino-Japanese garden architecture and its blood-brother, painting. The geomantic, or better, topomantic location of Heian-kyo is said to have been selected with regard to the mythological heavenly animals residing in the four "corners" of the universe. As writings dating from as far back as the Han dynasty reveal, it was believed that these animals, like all heavenly phenomena, manifested themselves on earth. Thus the Azure Dragon supposedly lived in a mountain stream in the east, the region of morning and spring. The home of the White Tiger lay in the mountains of the west, the region of evening and autumn. Morning and spring thereby represent the time of ascending Yang, while evening and autumn represent the period of ascending Yin. The Black Tortoise was thought to dwell in the mountains of the north, the direction of midnight and winter, while the Red Bird resided in the plains of the south, the direction of noon and summer.
Behind this notion of the four heavenly animals lies the ancient Chinese system of inductive correlations, known as wu-xing in Chinese and go-дуо in Japanese. Long translated as "five elements", the concept has more recently been rendered as "five activities" or "five evolutive phases". This system originated in the fourth century BC and existed alongside the traditional Chinese notions of Yin and Yang. As the latter represented an understanding of the universe in terms of polar opposites, so wu-xing proposed an equally dynamic interpretation of all reality in terms of five phases. These phases were symbolized by the ideograms for earth, wood, fire, metal and water. As shown in the diagram on page 43, the earth lies at the centre. The four segments of the circle correspond to the four cardinal points, to which are assigned wood (east), metal (west), water (north) and fire (south). Each of these go-дуо elements is attributed its own colour: earth is represented as yellow, wood as green, metal as white, water as black and fire as red. As visible in the diagram, these elements are part of a five-stage sequence of concentric circles, and are followed by rings containing the five main bodily organs, five human emotions, the four seasons and four times of day, until finally arriving at the four mythological animals. Everything under the sun found its place within these five stages of transformation, from the five planets and five basic types of animal to the elements of inner man: the five tastes, five voices and five major organs, which in turn correspond to five emotions - anger, joy, sorrow, terror and thoughtful reflection.
This five-phase system of correspondences thus constitutes both a macrocosmograph and a psychogram. It creates continuous cross-references between the outer world of nature and the inner world of man. Even today, the many Chinese pharmacies still practising at a local level in Japan will invariably have on display a chart of these correspondences. A further indication of the importance of this system may be seen in the fact that both the city and gardens of Heian-kyo were laid out in the form of Chinese mandalas, and can thus be interpreted as microcosmic replicas of the universe.
The ancient Japanese belief that evil spirits always come from the north-east, from the ki-mon, the Devil's Gate, probably had its roots in a natural phenomenon: in China and Japan, the bitterly cold winter winds come from the north-east. China furthermore suffered barbarian attacks from this same direction throughout its history, while the hostile and militant tribes who populated the north-eastern regions of Japan were only finally subdued by the Yamato clan. Heian-kyo was safely protected from any such "threat" by Mount Hiei, the highest peak in the armchair of mountains cradling the former Japanese capital and lying exactly north-east of the city.
The gardens of the Heian period may be found in three different types of setting. Some are contained within the palaces of the emperor and the aristocracy and thus fully subordinate to their architectural surroundings. Others are sited on the city outskirts, acting as a kind of intermediary between the urban environment and unspoilt nature. Others still adorn the main courtyards of Pure Land Buddhist temples.
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