![]() ![]() The garden of Mōtsū-ji temple, made in the 12th century in the north-eastern region of Hiraizumi and likely ordered by the ruler Fujiwara no Hidehira, uses clay slate stones with tiny round holes, dug by a clam species that lives on rock shores, to express a craggy shoreline. ‘There are now many areas of Japan that prohibit any new quarrying of stones for the sake of environmental protection, disaster prevention and preserving regional scenic beauty’ While making effective use of nearby materials was common, there are also cases where garden stones thought to have rarity value were brought to gardens from afar. ![]() ![]() In this way, the stones in Japanese gardens not only reflect the landscape of their local origin, but are intimately connected to human life. In an age before electricity, it was hoped that the white gravel in the karesansui gardens of Zen temples would also have the practical advantage of brightening rooms with its reflected sunlight. The white gravel used to express the ocean is another type of stone gathered from the mountains near Nanzen-ji temple: a granite stone that has been used for many purposes in Kyoto, including stone walls for castles and stone lanterns, but also daily tools such as mill stones. The garden came to be called ‘Tiger Cub Crossing’ ( Toranoko watashi), the large stone interpreted as a mother tiger and the five smaller stones imagined as her cubs crossing the sea. White gravel represents the ocean, next to which six stones are set, the largest laid to the left. At the foot of Kyoto’s Higashiyama mountains, there is a karesansui garden in front of the abbot’s quarters ( hōjō) of Nanzen-ji temple, thought to have been created by the legendary garden designer Kobori Enshū in the 17th century. In a dry garden ( karesansui), stones express water through the ripples raked over their surface. The raked gravel represents the ocean in the Hōjō Garden at Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto the six large stones popularly imagined to be a tiger and her cubs In the Sakuteiki, chert stones were either called ‘with angles’ or ‘mountain stone’: commonly seen in the mountains around Kyoto, the stones themselves are used to evoke the local mountainous scenery. Of all the stones that could be obtained from the mountains surrounding Kyoto, there was one that was especially prized as a garden stone: an angular mountain stone known today as chert. For ancient Japanese gardens, stones were typically gathered from sources within 10km of the garden site. Until modern transport technology developed in Japan, the difficulty of transporting stone was a major factor governing the selection of garden stones. Stones, water and plants are the main elements of a Japanese garden among them, the stone arrangements are what make up the garden’s framework.Įven small stones have weight. In later periods, Buddhist monks who excelled at making gardens were called ‘stone-standing monks’. In ancient Japan, ‘standing a stone’ was a metaphor for creating a garden. ‘To stand a stone, one must first know the great principles.’ Thus begin the opening lines of the Sakuteiki (Records of Garden Creation), the 11th-century book thought to be Japan’s oldest garden creation manual. Evolving with technology and changing demands, the use of stone in Japanese gardens proves consistent through to the present day ![]()
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