Japanese garden

The style of Japanese garden has a character of its own and is different from that of Western gardens as Italian and French. As the elements determining their styles these things are mentioned, such as plants, weather, stones, the lay of the land and other natural elements, moreover, social, cultural and scientific technical factors.

Landscape style Japanese garden is classified roughly into 3 components, that is, Tsukiyama, Hiraniwa and Roji, and the Sekiyo-boku is one component composing Tsukiyama, which has a role to block off the light of the afternoon sun, so is planted at the west part of the garden, and for which the broad-leaved trees changing their colors in autumn seem to fit. Here maples, cherry trees and plum trees are recommended.

"Japan the Beautiful and Myself" by KAWABATA Yasunari also shows the following description.

" The Japanese garden too, of course, symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, for the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. "Nothing" is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail than the Japaneseart of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of the rocks gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs. Compressed to the ultimate, the Japanese garden becomes the bonsai dwarf garden, or the bonseki, its dry version."

Let me show you Japanese gardens which are located in the the suburbs of the city of Hamamatsu.

Japanese garden of Makaya-ji (in the Kamakura era, the13th C.) on Oct. 02.2007.

Japanese garden of Ryotanji temple (in the Edo era, the 17th C.) by KOBORI Enshu, on May 28, 2007

Let me show you maples and well-known Japanese gardens where I have visited.

Maples such as "iroha-momiji", "yama-momiji", "oh-momiji" and their cultivars, "toh-kaede" and its cultivars, moreover, "hauchiwa-kaede", "itaya-kaede" and their cultivars are used by many people as the favorite gardening trees with the garden culture for a ground back.

Well-known Japanese gardens where I have visited

East Palace Garden, Nara Palace Site, Nara Pref.

Remains of Heijokyo Sakyo Sanjo Nibo Palace Garden, in Nara

Ohsawa Pond (Old Teiko Garden) Imperial Palace of Saga, Daikakuji Temple, Kyoto

Byodoin Phoenix Hall, modeled after the palace in the Land of Happiness in Uji, Kyoto Pref.

Maples & "Mohtsuji Temple" in Iwate Pref.

Johruriji Temple in Kidugawa City, Kyoto Pref.

Shakusuien Garden, well-known for the "Yodomari-ishi", in the end of the Heian era

Shomyoji Temple in Kanagawa Pref.

Eihoji Temple in Gifu Pref.

Erinji Temple Garden, juxtaposed two worlds, Yamanashi Pref.

Nanzen-in Garden typifying the Kamakura era