Sustaining The Dream

Reaching through the hedgerow

Honeysuckle tendrils –

And the river’s song flowing on.

Slowly closing the door

With barely a blush of sound-

The cat snores on.

At last summer heat

The thick air promising a shower -

Feel like dancing naked in the garden!

Out of the cracked concrete

Weeds with tiny yellow flowers.

The road choked with blind traffic -

Evening rush hour.

From the snow dusted field

A crowd of crows rising –

Wondering how your day has been.

Sustaining the dream

By sitting still as incense burns down.

Just the breath

A thread by which everything hangs -

Nothing above, nothing below.

Colour And The Japanese Garden

Monochrome is preponderant in Japanese art and is also illustrated in the garden tradition we see today. In contrast to our Western European tradition, the deliberate use colour in the Japanese garden appears fleetingly, principally in spring and autumn; the summer months reveal no concerted effort to create colourful planting effects.  The outstanding preference is for subtle chromatic effects; when colour does come into the display the effect is all the more intense as the contrast is all the greater. The Heian period (784-1185) was an age of extravagant indulgence, coupled with a keen appreciation of the aesthetics of colour; a court-based culture steeped in elaboration, elegance and refinement. Flowering plants were highly regarded and many court rituals and festivals were associated with the appearance of certain species. The planting of flowering plants was done with restraint, yet in the contemporary literature over 170 colours are mentioned. Prose works are rich in references to colour; kimono design, costumes and paintings reflected a society with a passionate love of colour, which spilled over into the garden.

With the increasing influence of Buddhism and, in particular, Zen Buddhism in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), monochrome became the established trend. A new class of rulers established themselves; the samurai and monks brought with them a revised emphasis on the role of colour. Zen Buddhism, with its exhortation to direct simplicity, concentrated on revealing the essential core of meaning, preferring to leave to the imagination anything beyond the essential. Colour was associated with worldliness, a phenomenological world to be transcended, leaving an emphasis on form and texture. Thus form in design gained a supremacy that has lasted ever since.  Similarly in 20th century Europe, Picasso and Braque, in the later stages of 'analytical cubism' exploring the relationship of form in two dimensions, demanded the virtual elimination of colour, in their work. In ink paintings (suibokuga) of the Kamakura and Muromachi eras (1185-1568) entire landscapes were expressed with absolute economy, in monochrome, using only gradations of ink washes. The close relationship between, painting and garden building, as we can see at Ryoan-ji, created a physical model of the summation of artistic ideas of the time.

Colour re-established itself during the Momoyama period (1568-1603) when there is evidence of the indulgence in exuberant colour. This was to be tempered by the restraining influence of the Tea Ceremony, Cha no yu, and its aesthetic conceptions. In a sense there was a compromise; colour still appeared in the garden, but was defined by season. In Japanese gardens in May one is greeted with exuberant displays of azaleas, but the same gardens a month later will give a very different impression.  Colour still has a place and a time, but its importance receives less attention than the harmonies of interactive form on which the garden principally depends.

Cherry leaves

As Kamaboku and Shigoto arrived in the Courtyard, two other gardeners were getting ready to leave and they shouted something indistinct to Kamaboku who waved back at them. They had left a bamboo rake, brush and a wicker basket by the foot of the steps leading up to the veranda in front of the main hall of the palace. Shigoto stood looking about him at the vast empty expanse of the Southern Courtyard stretching out in front of the shinden building. The courtyard was bounded on three sides by buildings, and was open on the fourth side, where it ran out in front of the Great Dragon Pond. Because of its intimate proximity to the principal reception rooms of the palace, it was not a place he ever ventured outside of festival days, or those occasions when the inhabitants of Mikura were called to appear before their Lord and master. Then the courtyard would be a bustle of colour, movement, familiar and unfamiliar faces, and a thousand different things to catch the eye. The bulk of the main hall loomed over the two figures, it’s immense and imposing structure, appeared to Shigoto as an ancient beast, to be struggling with the twin burdens of age and grave responsibility, trying to get to its feet. Shigoto looked up in awe at the vast expanse of the roof and imagined all the tiles cascading down in an uncontrollable tidal wave towards him. His mouth was dry, and he felt very small indeed.

“Ah, here are your tools,” said Kamaboku as he strode towards the rake, brush and basket, and then brought them back to Shigoto who was still standing looking unsure about him. “Come on now, look lively, its your first day at work, Shigoto san. Here take the brush, eh. Now what you have been assigned to do is to sweep and clean the Courtyard. You must leave it in perfect condition, not a leaf on the ground, and not a weed to be seen.”

Kamaboku held out an arm holding the brush towards Shigoto. The end of the bamboo handle of the brush reached above his head. He looked at the tool in his hands, the head of which had been made by bundling and lashing together very thin long bamboo side shoots into a flared tongue-like shape, and the worn ends of which curved lightly upwards through repeated use.

“So, here you are, set to, somebody will be back to see how you are doing. Until then you are to be on your own. These are Sensei’s instructions. He is very strict, as you know well, so do a good job of it, mind, eh.”  Kamaboku edged in closer to Shigoto and in a quieter voice, said, “If I were you I would start in one corner, say over there, and make your way across to the other side, all the way along the front of the building. Then make your way back again to the side you started on. Tidy a section a few paces wide each time. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. That’s the way to do it. Easy as anything, eh. Oh, and make sure to brush out any scuff marks properly.”

“What are scuff marks?” asked Shigoto, holding his brush and feeling hopelessly lost with the enormity of the task before him.

“These …” replied Kamaboku with his trademark smile, as he dragged one foot across the loose gravel surface, leaving a faint mark on the ground, and with that he left Shigoto to his own devices, and made his way across the courtyard in the direction of the gardens.

Leaving the rake and basket behind, Shigoto took the brush, with its oversized handle, and walked slowly and carefully across to where Kamaboku had indicated a place to start. He set down the head of the brush on the surface, and looked up toward the building. The veranda was at a height where, if he pushed himself up on his toes, then he could see a distance along its length. There was no one there, then Shigoto turned to look down the length of the open corridor that lead on to a pavilion set over the Great Dragon pond. The pavilion was empty, and the corridor vacant and still, but for the breeze humming softly as it passed through some ornamental fretwork under a low handrail. Shigoto looked down at the brush, then, cautiously started to walk sideways along the front of the veranda of the main hall towards the steps dragging the brush behind him. Arriving at the side of the steps he looked up, and could see from his new vantage point that he truly was alone. Then he set off back to where he has just come from, now dragging the tool behind him. For an hour or so Shigoto marched quietly backwards and forwards across the courtyard dragging the brush behind him. When he came to the first of the two ancient trees in the courtyard, he stopped. One was an ancient cherry tree, its trunk splitting open like a rotting fruit, at its centre a gaping vacant space emptied by time and decay. Several posts had been driven into the ground around the cherry, and a girdle of rope prevented the last morsels falling apart completely. Still, several live branches hung on through antiquity to reach weakly up into the sky, and every spring it would blossom, just as it had been doing for over two hundred and eighty springs previously. On the opposite side of the steps, on the west side of the courtyard, was a citrus tree, with a dark, deeply fissured trunk of exaggerated girth twisting about itself. In its great age, it seemed to be caught between being pressed down from above, and forced up from below, as if it alone were responsible for keeping the sky and earth apart. Above the trunk there was a dense series of domes of dark evergreen leaves, and now in the late summer, small orange coloured bitter fruits peeked shyly between the dense masses of the foliage.

The rope girdle wrapped tight around the waist of the cherry had been coiled very neatly, with tight abutting turns. Shigoto walked around the tree following the turns of straw-coloured rope, looking for a beginning, or an end. The binding had been done so neatly, with such great dexterity, that he could not see how the ends had been fastened in. From around the base of the tree, he collected a few dried leaves which had tumbled down from the branches above, putting the crisp fragments of leaf together in a neat pile he went to collect the basket where it sat waiting for him. Arriving back by the tree, Shigoto was surprised to find the leaves had disappeared from where he had left them. He looked up, half expecting to notice a breeze or wind. The air hung still. Walking around the tree, looking to see where his hoard had scattered to, he came across the leaves on the opposite side of the trunk.

“I did not put the leaves here, on this side, I am sure I did not,” he thought to himself. Then as he bent down to pick up the leaves to deposit them in the basket, he noticed that the leaves were not in the small neat heap he had created, but lying in loose lines running out from the base of the trunk toward the centre of the Courtyard. He crouched on his haunches and carefully picked up the leaves one by one, dropping them into the basket as he went. From time to time he looked up, his eyes scanning along the veranda, running the length of the corridor, and also behind him across the expressionless space of the courtyard. Though he appeared to be alone, he could not avoid the feeling he was being watched. A bead of sweat ran down from his forehead and dropped onto the back of his hand, he fell back startled for a moment. When he realised what it was, he laughed. “Hey, I am a gardener now. I am Shigoto Okugi, 15^th Grade Under Gardener,” he said aloud, to reassure himself.

With the leaves collected and in captivity, he continued his wandering backwards and forwards across the space dragging the brush behind him. When he came across a leaf or any other foreign body, he would stop, drop the tool he was using, walk over to the basket and deposit his collection there. Then walk back to his brush and resume his meandering course. 

Just Watching Ants

Weaving seemingly random patterns across the blue brick path the tiny black ants are busy, moving in such ways as if to suggest straight lines do not belong to their DNA. Science tells me they are following scent trails as they venture to and from their nest somewhere beneath the bricks. The world must seem vast to them, just as the world seems vast to my own senses. One vastness nestled into another, each stretching out into its own infinity. 

Observing the mind is like watching ants; apparently random thoughts, images, and sense impressions flickering across the screen of knowing. It is not always obvious where the trail leads. Yet how often these tracks run in unbidden ways, merging sensory information, yearning and desire, with a need to try and make some kind of 'sense' of it all. Find a pattern, one that is not simply a narrative we create, we weave to justify ourselves. To find ourselves, to know which one offers the greatest hope. That is the hardest part, being mind and yet needing to be able to detach sufficiently to know the mind. We speak of 'I', yet this 'I' is also stranger we see on a train heading perhaps to another destination, a glimpse of a face on a busy street, one perchance we would not recognise again.

So which way to turn now? Which scent path to follow? Questions tumble one after the other like the wind rushing on through the trees, the stream that runs over gravel shoals, the air full of birdsong. Perhaps all there is, is the quest itself.

Asleep at the bottom of the garden

The fox ignores the full washing line,

Such tasks of no concern at all.

Cascading over the wall

Next door’s clematis in flower

The beauty of the neglected wall

Suddenly revealed.

Afloat,

Seemingly released

From a tangle of branches -

Half a moon.

Rising

Spiralling upward.

Dawn

The sacred hour

A gateless gate

between dark and light.

Chasing an errant snail

Whilst sweeping the room.

Gathering poems

To offer up to you.

Breaking the diamond

touching source and end

Mind a Mirror.

Chishaku-in

The temple of Chishaku-in (Kyoto) was moved from present-day Wakayama prefecture, south of Kyoto, by order of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1598. Its garden is attributed to Sen no Rikyu,the tea master, although this is not proven and probably rests on the close relationship between the two men.  The temple was rebuilt in 1677 and again extensively repaired after a fire in 1947. The buildings have also undergone extensive renovations in the last ten years.  Originally the garden was laid out as an extensive stroll garden with views out over the Higashiyama hills (a mountainous ridge that runs along the east side of Kyoto, beyond which is Lake Biwa).  The present, smaller, garden is centred about a large pond which extends under the veranda, probably as a result of alterations to the garden carried out in the Edo period.  Across the pond a small steep-sided hill merges skilfully into the landscape beyond.  A tall stone rising from the pond denotes a cascade in the 'muko ochi' style.  A promontory projects a low narrow bridge of rough-hewn stone slabs across the pond; from the bridge a steppingstone path leads up and over the hill.  The steep banks are studded with many rocks; the stream feeding the waterfall is itself bridged by a slightly curving piece of cut granite.

The planting is mainly of azaleas clipped into rounded forms, and pruned pines.  The extensive planting merges into the less controlled background trees.  The focus of the garden is now the veranda.  A large upright stone with a flat top scooped out as a water drain stands by the veranda, rising straight from the pond itself, a pond within a pond.  The garden has an air of quiet restrained delicacy; its consummate fusion of garden and architecture gives a clear sense of intimacy and closeness to nature. The garden today is viewed from the interior of a large reception room, which frames beautifully the view onto the garden. The waterfall provides a gentle soundtrack of falling water to give another sensory dimension to the garden view.

detail of planting in a tsuboniwa (courtyard garden) space

Chishaku-in expresses a feeling of wabi which is much appreciated.  There is no obvious symbology to attract the intellect, rather it is a garden that gently calls upon the heart.

Further info to explore

Here is a link to a site I love, well worth checking out if you are looking for further information regarding Japanese gardens and particularly if you are looking to create your own Japanese style garden.

www.facebook.com/zenibo777 (Japanese Gardens)

Also try: http://www.turnyourgardenjapanese.com

Happy garden creation.

Ryoan-ji

Ryoan-ji, Kyoto. The righthand section of the arrangement.

One of the most familiar images of Japanese gardens is of the karesansui garden at Ryoan-ji, with its fifteen stones set in a ‘sea’ of raked gravel. The temple  attracts thousands of visitors each week, and yet somehow amid the coming and going it maintains a stately, enigmatic dignity. Not that this is a new phenomena, the garden has attracted visitors  ever since it was first created possibly in the early 1490’s. In due course , the garden has attracted a reputation of every shade of opinion, from the uncomprehending  dismissal to highest praise. Lorraine Kuck refers to the garden as ‘a sermon in stone’, “undoubtedly one of the world’s great masterpieces of religiously inspired art.” Whilst the garden has spawned many imitations in many places, it has seemingly never been bettered. If nothing else then its can be said to be the most iconic of all Japanese gardens. And it deserves that status. There is debate among garden scholars in Japan which questions the early date of the garden, some argue the that composition we see today is of a later period, possibly late 18th century. 

Ryoan-ji. Looking towards the central section from the left.

Scant clues remain as to who the designer or creator of the garden was, there are the remains of two names cut into the back of one of the taller stones, though whether ‘Kotaro’ and “Hikojiro’ were responsible for the garden cannot be taken with any certainty. Whoever was responsible, for surely it was ultimately the work of one person, he produced an undeniable masterpiece of landscape art. Perhaps it is fitting that the author of the work remains anonymous, for the greatest art transcends the individual ego and is capable of speaking directly to the heart of the viewer. A sense of anonymity pervades the whole garden despite its overwhelming popularity, we do not know who the garden was designed by, or for whom. Most likely, as the temple is part of the Zen Buddhist school, the garden would have of been created as a aid to spiritual contemplation for the monks, the whole project suffused with a desire to explore spiritual knowledge through art. The later has been a profound contribution to the cultural achievements of Japan.

Ryoan-ji, the left hand section.

Inevitably the garden attracts and continues to attract explanation, as to its ‘meaning’ and significance. When confronted with the physical presence of the garden the viewer may be initially struck by its sheer blandness. The stones used in the composition are not stones of any particular intrinsic beauty, they are simple ‘field boulders’ that were probably collected nearby, nor are they extravagant shapes, that may suggest anthropomorphic forms to the imaginative eye. There is no vegetation within the garden space, the air about the stones is completely clear. The gravel surface is raked in fine even lines that do not deviate from the straight. Everything is simply as it is. Of note s that wherever along the verandah one views the garden usually one of the fifteen stones is obscured from the line of sight. This has lead to the observation that "the viewer becomes the fifteenth stone".

It is interesting that the garden is difficult to take in visually as a whole. Thus the eye is drawn to 'read' the composition much as if one were viewing a scroll painting, with the eyes scanning across the picture. The most natural sequence to do this is to view the garden from left to right across the courtyard area which is about 24m wide. The spaces between the groupings of stone feels enormous, as if one were travelling vast distances. The use of empty space is a most significant aspect of the whole, and relates to the concept yohaku, which is a term given to the use of empty space or 'white space' seen in East Asian paintings. There are many significant allusions to the Japanese style of painting known as  haboku sansuiga ('broken ink painting'), which arose in the middle ages in Japan, where ink was literally splashed across the paper allowing for spontaneous effects to occur. The painter Sesshu was a master of this style.

Sesshu Toyo 1420-1506

The original composition would have incorporated aspects of shakkei ('borrowed scenery'), which are now obscured by trees. The venerable boundary wall has been designated National Cultural Treasure status. At it‘s inception, the garden would have of been less introspective than the garden that we see today, with age it has become more introspective. The compelling beauty of the garden lies solely within the relationships between the groups of stones, and between the stones themselves. The placement of the  stones seeming random, and yet creating a sense of absolute order and knowingness. Only the slight rise and fall in rhythmic tension between the stone groups animate what is otherwise a perfectly still scene. For once we are not invited to view the garden as a representation of Nature, and thereby  contemplate our relationship with Nature , but to know that experience directly without any intermediary. It is a place here the garden is a prism held up to the light of our experience of landscape and our most intimate relationship with that landscape.

The garden attracts visitors by the hundreds, if not thousands, each day.

.

“Heaven and earth and I are of the same root,

The ten-thousand things and I are of one sustenance.”

                                                                                      Seng-chao (384-414)

Borrowed Landscapes - Shakkei

Adachi Museum

'Shakkei' is the Japanese term for the use of ‘borrowed scenery’ or ‘borrowed landscape’ as part of the integral composition of a garden. The term itself was not used in Japan until the nineteenth century, though the idea of using elements of the landscape external to the garden certainly predates this time. It was also widely used in Chinese gardens, and may also be found as a design device in Western gardens too. Capability Brown the renowned 18th English garden designer was familiar with incorporating elements of landscape beyond the garden.

Murin-an, Kyoto

The Japanese garden is composed of a series of subtly structured views. One can appreciate the gardens as being a cross between painting (two dimensional representation) and sculpture (representation in three dimensions). As such a view will require a framing device, for example by means of architectural elements such as  frame posts, garden walls, hedges or earth works and so on. The framing  device is a way of limiting the borrowed scenery to the desirable elements, thereby concentrating the impact in terms of the composition of the garden.

Shinnyo-do, Kyoto

Shakkei is always balanced in the composition by the arrangement of the garden composition in the foreground of the scene. Thus the middle ground becomes the fulcrum of the scene as a whole. Usually at this point there is a 'cutting device', often the straight line of a hedge, or perhaps a capped wall. It also becomes a point at which the borrowed scenery and the garden proper meet. The sharp line of distinction between the two aspects actually emphasises their union, pulling the two elements together rather than creating a separation. Interestingly shakkei is not often used in the Tea garden, where the intention is to direct the attention of the viewer inwards, and not to create a distraction from this end. Many old gardens which featured shakkei have lost their views through modern day urban development

Entsu-ji, Kyoto. Mt Hiei 'captured' between tree trunks. The view of this once isolated temple
is under threat from the encroachment of the city.

Teji Itoh in his book 'Space And Illusion in The Japanese Garden' (http://www.amazon.com/Space-Illusion-Japanese-Garden-Teiji/dp/0834815222) lists six of the most common ways of creating shakkei:

1) with tree trunks.

2) with planting.

3) with posts and eaves.

4) with the sky.

5) with  garden ornaments, i.e. a stone lantern.

6) with a window.

Cultural Borrowing

Osmosis Day Spa, California

The very notion of creating a “Japanese style garden” raises many interesting questions for consideration. Not least whether it is possible at all to create a “Japanese garden” outside of its geographical and cultural origins.  Attempting even a partial answer will draw us into to considering the very notions of what constitutes a garden, its function in society and within the wider cultural context. Some questioning of the fundamental position of the garden is beneficial in order to understand how to approach the question of importing ideas from one culture into another.

Limerick University, Ireland

In Japan, the exercise of creating gardens has over several centuries evolved into a highly sophisticated tradition. The Western garden (in the modern sense) by comparison is a relative new comer. Though both approaches are ultimately derived from the same starting point; that is the garden as an expression of the notion of Paradise, or an idealised state or condition. It is a characteristic of the development of a tradition that innovation and accumulative change occurs at a relatively slow speed. In the West, it has so far been the case that the development of the garden has been subject more to changing notions of taste and fashion, which have meant that transformation and developments have occurred at a much quicker pace. Further, we can note that in a world of tradition (and the sacred), there is a deliberate richness and ambiguity of meaning, which contrasts to a modern (and especially in the visually dominated post modern world) world that primarily strives to be transparent and literal in its expression.

Private garden Manchester

In the West at the present time it has become very popular to look to the East for creative inspiration. For example, the word ‘Zen’ is synonymous in many peoples’ mind with Japan and Japanese culture. The word is frequently used as a shorthand term to denote a certain style that may have association with minimalism, brevity, abstraction, etc. Often the word is be used in a context completely disassociated from any connection with its origin (as in a hairdressers shop called ‘Now and Zen’!) Hence a “Zen style garden”, is often designated as being a garden composed primarily of a gravel groundcover, which may or may not also feature, rocks, plants etc. It is its physical constituents that attempt to define it, rather than the cultural context and tradition from which it has arisen.

Nursing home, Lancashire

Many “Japanese style” gardens have been created outside of Japan, they vary from the loosest of attempts (a curved red bridge arching over a pond or a stone lantern set in a flower border), to more serious and high-minded attempts to recreate after the manner of gardens that may be seen in Japan itself.  Is it possible at all to measure the relative authenticity of these gardens? If we mean by ‘authenticity’ how closely they align with the original models and forms in Japan, then presumably all such attempts would fail at the first hurdle. Perhaps the key element to the process of adoption is to absorb the underlying techniques, and then integrate those to local conditions and sensibilities.

Garden space in a commercial building, Manchester 

Japan originally imported the notion of creating gardens from the China, that original model was presumably influenced by native cultural ideas, as well as available materials. In time the gardens would come to exhibit a uniquely Japanese character. Perhaps what is more pertinent is for us to look again at the Japanese garden tradition as a whole, to regard it as a source of inspiration in our own attempts to create and find meaning in gardens. In other words, to also look beyond surface appearances, toward the potential that is being offered. In this way we may draw the greatest benefit from the study and appreciation of another culture. Probably it is far too early in the process to say what the influence of the Japanese garden will be on the West, as we are still at a relatively formative stage in the process. Though any process that enhances our awareness and sensitivity to the creative potential in garden making is to be welcomed. Certainly in the tradition of garden creation as practised in Japan one may find preserved a clear and unhindered expression of the original notion of the garden itself. That is, the garden as a work representing sacred space; a place where humans may interact with the forces of Nature, and in so doing be able to reconnect more profoundly with that which sustains us. As we hurtle recklessly into the future it is something that is becoming increasingly urgent to both well-being of the society we live in and also to ourselves.

Norwich Cathedral

Daisen-in

The passage of the 'stream' can easily be deduced

Daisen-in, a sub-temple of the Daitoku-ji temple compound in Kyoto, contains one of the finest gardens in Japan.  It is important historically and artistically; in it one can read almost the entire canon of achievement in the Japanese garden tradition.  All the symbolic effects influenced by the aesthetics of painting, and the art of creating illusory representations of space are brought together in one small area.  The temple of Daisen-in was founded in the Muromachi period as a temple of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, 1509, by Kogaten Sotan (1464-1540), the abbot of Daitoku-ji and a figure of great standing.  He was widely revered for his determined personality, and his admirers included the Shogun Yoshimasa, as well as important persons in the Imperial court.  Sotan needed his contacts to achieve his aim of building Daisen-in, as the country was wrecked by civil wars that did not leave Kyoto free from lawless destruction.  Daitoku-ji itself had been completely razed in 1468 as a result of these wars.

Principal stone setting representing mountain

The garden of Daisen-in was laid out between 1509 and 1513.  Sotan retired in 1509 and it is generally thought that the L-shaped garden was laid out to adorn his retirement quarters.  The plots are long and narrow; that to the north is approximately 5 x 10m while the eastern section is about 16 x 4.5m. In the corner at the right angle rise the tallest stones in the garden, which give the impression of towering mountains; one of these stones is referred to as Mount Horai (Shumisen).  To the right of these rises a 'dry' mountain stream, narrow and precipitous as it tumbles between rocks.  The stream is crossed by a flat stone bridge, set at the level of the veranda of the building, and then widens to flow south.  At about the midpoint the 'water' runs over a flat-topped stone, set almost at ground level, before disappearing under a (later) corridor which connects the Abbot's quarters to the main building.  The stream continues past a stone shaped like a boat (funeishi) before finally disappearing beneath the veranda.

Boat stone, mirrored by the arrangement to the rear

The 'stream' emerges into the southern garden which is flat and entirely covered with white raked sand broken only by two conical mounds.  This section of the garden is referred to as the 'Universal Sea', an image that is maintained by the surrounding double-banked hedge, which may be read as a symbolic representation of waves.  The scroll-like effect of the garden is broken only by the roofed walkway, with its typically Zen-inspired bell-shaped opening, which dates from a radical restoration of the garden in 1961, based on plans from the later Edo period (18th century); whether this walkway existed in the original scheme we cannot know for sure, as to a certain extent it does interrupt the visual flow.  

Nearly 100 stones are set in the garden, in compositions which clearly seem to derive from Chinese landscape paintings. The soaring mountain peaks and plunging valleys so beloved of the painters are particularly well represented in the garden.  The famous panels in the rooms facing onto the garden feature landscape paintings by Soami.  The composition includes crane and tortoise islands, reinforcing the underlying symbolic content with its allusion to the overall garden as paradise motif.

South garden, the double layered hedge represents waves

It is always difficult to be sure now how important the symbolic content was to the original creators, although it is clear that the Daisen-in garden can be read as being symbolic in its entirety.  Clearly many symbolic aspects were incorporated into the overall design. However the greatest artistic triumph of the garden lies in its unequivocal relationship with Chinese landscape painting, and as such the garden can be recognised as a masterpiece. Its present popularity is well deserved even if distracting to the visitor attempting to view the garden in peace and quiet.