I can't quite remember when I first was exposed to Japanese gardens but I think it was in a book that I borrowed from Ryde Library when I was about ten years old. But ever since I've been both charmed and captivated by Japanese gardens and architecture and, probably, more broadly, the Japanese aesthetic. I remember, somewhere, reading that with the famous rocks in the stone garden in Ryoan-ji Kyoto that their layout conformed with the golden ratio. (But when I examined it more closely, I could see that they were a bit fast and loose with the truth and there certainly wasn't a perfect fit). Nevertheless I've always wondered if it was possible to put together some rules about layout and planting techniques for Japanese Gardens ...and i have a few books that claim to do just this. Indeed there is a long history of famous gardeners giving advice about their aesthetic principles. This book is one such set of advice...albeit in somewhat broad (and sweeping) principles.
It's well known that one of the techniques used is "borrowed scenery" where the natural location and the views (of forests, mountains etc) is used as a an obvious backdrop to some local feature of the garden...such as a tree or a lake.Teiji Itoh expounds on this technique and various variations of it in the current book. He distinguishes nine ways to capture or command garden elements. These are:
Capturing alive....I think with the idea that the things you are capturing: trees, mountains, ponds, rivers are natural, living things......though we might question if a pond is a living thing in its own right.
Commanding a good view....the idea being that you build your garden where there is existing a good view...it's not something that you can introduce.
Constituting a Shakki (borrowed scenery or borrowed landscape....but in its original form it means a landscape captured alive) garden. The garden needs to be within a building or complex of buildings; need to actually have scenery; need to frame or trim to suit the scenery/view; Need to link the borrowed scenery with the foreground;
Capturing with tree trunks; The device of capturing a distant view of mountains alive by viewing through the trunks of nearby trees is the most common of shakki techniques.
Capturing with woods...an example is cited where the view is captured between two local groves of trees
capturing with posts and eves...something like a framing of the view...constraining the vision ...cutting out some of the sky, for example.
Capturing with the sky. I kind of get the idea that you can frame the sky with (say a lake in the foreground and a horizontal bench of a tree but Itoh, doesn't really explain this very well to my way of thinking. I've even visited his chief example of Shugaku-in in Kyoto and vaguely remember the view that he talks about. But if you are looking for some practical pointers here .....you won't find them. He goes on at length about Chinese painters introducing techniques ...but they were for painters not gardeners. He does try to link the idea of empty space in painting and use of the sky in gardens...but not really successfully to my way of thinking.
Capturing with a stone lantern. Originally used for illumination at night the lanterns came to be used as decorative elements and, in another role, for integrating borrowed scenery with the garden itself. He does have a nice photo of this technique (plate 29).
Capturing with a window. Not much explanation here. Basically, if you've got a view you can put a window in your villa so that you can see the view.
Itoh writes quite a lot about the tea house and tea garden. But makes the point that the garden around a tea room is all about the approach....getting into the right frame of mind for the tea room. The tea room itself is enclosed; it's all about the tea ceremony and doesn't look outwards. However, the tea room garden certainly influenced the development of the courtyard garden and townsfolk, when it came to developing their own gardens used the tea garden as their model...mainly because of the important role that the tea ceremony had come to represent in Japanese culture.
One of the really nice things about this book is the great set of photographs towards the end. Most of them are in black and white but they do show b&W photography off at its best. Some lovely works there. there are also some colour pics but they (surprisingly) are not in the same class as the B&Ws.
I quite liked the book...though it would't be a great handbook to be using to design a Japanese garden. I think I would be looking for something a little more practical. Still happy to give it five stars. ( )

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