Japanese gardens

Akira Nakata

"Kyoto's gardens are among the city's many glories. They are beautiful, thought provoking. These unparalleled works of art at the creative frontier between man and nature date mainly from the Kamakura, Muromachi, and early Edo periods (approximately 1200 to 1650). These were eras of political and cultural ferment left us with many significant developments in the arts from the Noh theatre to weaving and dyeing. The gardens of Kyoto featured in this book are a spectacular example of this peerless art form and collectively form a distinctive aspect of Japanese cultural heritage. Gardens, by incorporating living elements into a man-made design that is then integrated with buildings and other structures, necessarily embody their builders' philosophies concerning the relationship between humanity and nature. Those can be, very broadly speaking, divided into philosophies that view human...