Historic References

The earliest major treatise on garden design is the Sakuteiki, (The Classic of Garden Making). Written sometime in the eleventh century (a supplementary text was added in 1289), it has been attributed to Tachibana no Toshitsuna, the illegitimate son of Fujiwara no Yorimichi, and the grandson of the founder of the Byodo-in. A minor court official—he held the position of Director-General of the Construction Secretariat—he may also have been a designer of gardens, including that of his own estate.

The Sakuteiki reflects the aesthetic sensibilities of the great Heian courts, and may well be based on earlier garden treatises now lost. The text is not illustrated, and although its instructions to a gardener are often very precise, it does not deal with the purely technical aspects of garden building. Some of its language is rather vague and even contradictory, but it is clear that a number of the principles it discusses would appear in later garden designs. Among these:

(1) The garden should conform to the topographic characteristics of the site, including the natural flow of water.

(2) Elements of a garden can simulate famous scenic spots, a notion also reflected in the poetry of the Heian Period. This idea would find realization in a number of gardens known to us today, a good example being the garden of Katsura in which the famous vista of Amanohashidate is imitated.

(3) Gardens should conform to what one recognizes as the Chinese principles of feng shui, playing close attention to directional symbolism and the propitious choice and placing of elements .

(4) Gardens should capture the spirit of nature as well as imitate its forms. The text also contains many references to the types of islands, waterfalls, and rock arrangements one might create in a garden, and these references have played a major role in later interpretations of Japanese gardens.

Whether the designers of early gardens actually thought along the same lines is open to question, however, and one should be cautious in using the Sakuteiki as a key to the meaning or symbolism of all Japanese gardens.

A second major text on garden design, the Senzui narabini yagyoo no zu (Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water, and Hillside Field Landscapes), is attributed to the priest Zoen, and the principles it discusses may actually predate the Sakuteiki. However, because the text is found only in a scroll bearing the dates 1448 and 1466, it may well be as much a product of the fifteenth century as it is a reflection of an earlier source. Evidence of a later date is the fact that it concentrates on the small scenic gardens common to the Muromachi Period rather than the large gardens of the Heian estates.

The Senzui follows some of the same principles laid down in the Sakuteiki, but it goes beyond that early text in its analysis of individual elements. It stresses, among other things, the symbolic and geomantic significance of rocks and their placement, going so far as to give colorful and evocative names to the various shapes of garden stones. Unlike the Sakuteiki, this later text was illustrated, although the illustrations are less helpful than one might hope. And as is the case with the Sakuteiki, one should be cautious about assuming that all of the gardens of this important period observe the rules and principles promoted by this text.

Many later writers on Japanese gardens do make that assumption, interpreting the "meaning" of various garden elements, particularly rocks, on the basis of these sources. But the gap between theory and practice can be as wide in Eastern art as it often is in the art of the West, and to assume that all Japanese gardens reflect formulas and symbolic associations expressed in written texts is a matter for speculation, not assertion.