There is no simple definition of what constitutes a Japanese garden, as there is a very unique style. For western eyes, three more surprising elements are: Stone lanterns the water vase or tsukubai and raked gravel with rocks, but these components are not sufficient to make a Japanese garden.
The composition is important in any garden, but what distinguishes a Japanese garden is the good result achieved by a mixture of carefully pruned trees, sand, water and rock. The goal is not simply to achieve an aesthetic effect, but draws its inspiration from two main religions in Japan: Shinto and Buddhism.
Since ancient times, the Japanese have regarded places surrounded by rocks as abodes of gods, as well as mountains, forests and rivers are traditionally considered sacred ground. And in these ancient Shinto beliefs that the creative source of the Japanese garden evolved.
When Buddhism by the Chinese entered Japan in the 6 th century brought new intellectual conventions finding the right path in garden design. The first of these was the use of the gardens to represent the Buddhist view of heaven. Then, after the 14 th century, Zen Buddhist doctrine gave rise to one of the most important concepts in Japanese gardening, the symbolic expression of an entire universe in a confined space, basically a miniature universe. Various ingenious devices have been used to achieve these effects, the raked gravel to represent a river or the sea, stones with appropriate forms to represent islands or mountains, and miniature trees to represent an entire forest.
Japanese Gardens, purchased in their compositions, a delicate pictorial that lasts almost still, becoming field of observation and study, triggering a concept very different from Western gardening, which often seeks to delight with a profusion of abstract shapes and bright colors.
When peace returned to Japan in the late 16 th century, after many years of internal strife, famous samurai and shoguns developed their love of art through the design of gardens, building them with rocks with amazing shapes and using plants with sophisticated silhouettes. These ideas were later shown off by the great master of the tea ceremony, Sen no Rikyu, who sought inspiration for his tea garden (Niwa roji) tranquility in an isolated mountain village. This was symbolized through items such as milestones, lanterns and stone tubs and trees by strictly surprising features.
Although still more sober design seems to be regarded by many as the “true spirit” of Japanese gardens, recent examples of the more exuberant style are easy to find today in Japan, particularly in the suburban belt around large modern city.
The long period of the Tokugawa shogunate from the beginning of 17 th century gave birth to another style of Japanese garden, a summary of everything that had happened before. This is recognized as Kaiyu (the place of pleasure), in which various styles of gardens, often around a central lake, were built to show a change of scene, surprising visitors as they wandered around. Later gave birth to what is now regarded as one of the most important elements of a Japanese garden: the shakkei or borrowed landscape.
The concept of nature, reproduced in miniature, has been interpreted over the centuries and inserted by the niwashi (Master Gardeners) as a basic concept in projects of Japanese Gardens, and is now natural that nature should be copied or used by distant hills or project background landscapes and other topographic features that are “borrowed” and integrated view of the garden. In this way, the garden and nature seem to become one, but in the end is a subtle combination of two things.
