A Japanese Touch for Your Garden [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION "[In the garden] he wished to create the attitude of a newly-awakened soul still lingering amid shadowy dreams of the past, yet bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of a mellow spiritual light, and yearning for the freedom that lay in the expanse beyond." —Okakura Kakuzo It is morning. The man has washed and put on a blue suit. He is now sitting quietly while he sips a cup of tea and stares off into the landscape before him. A large rugged mountain rises in the west; it is not so far away that he can't hear the splash of the waterfall it conceals. A stream rushes to the plain and feeds a lake that widens almost to his feet. The man traces the shoreline to a dense forest on the other side; the trees in front are twisted, and he can almost hear the wind that has played upon them over the years. Behind, tall cedars rise up a hill to a secluded mountain temple. There are distances beyond that forest he would like to travel someday. But now there is no time. The man picks up his briefcase, tells his wife he will be back late that evening, and, once outside the gate, steps vigorously into the line of people already hurrying to the train station, about a five-minute walk away. . . . The landscape the man was looking at was not a real landscape at all, but a Japanese garden only a few meters square. He built it himself The "mountain" was a large stone he had brought in by truck. The "waterfall" and the "stream" were smaller stones and pebbles carefully arranged in clefts and tiers. The "sea" was of white gravel, and the "windswept trees" were a few pines he trained when they were young. The "hill" was made with soil removed during contouring, and the "secluded temple" was suggested by a stone tower purchased at a local garden-supply store. But not once while looking at this scene, though he looks at it every morning, did the man say to himself "This is just a garden." What he saw was a landscape: alive, unsullied, vast, and serene. It prepared him for his day in the city that lay beyond the garden wall. Most Western-style gardens are admired for their formal beauty; their careful geometries celebrate the rational precision of their makers. They also offer colorful flowers or food for the table. The Japanese garden is no less contrived than its Western counterpart. But its rhythms and patterns—reproducing and symbolizing those of the landscape in the world outside—are established in such a way as to disguise the human hand behind them. Garden stones and trees are laid out asymmetrically to suggest the rugged wildness of nature. Permanent greens, grays, and browns predominate, but they are counterpointed by scattered flowers and fruits that mark time's passage with cycles of change. Empty space, wind, periods of dormancy, shadows, and viewing angles are