100 Japanese Gardens is the sort of niche publication that works in several ways: as a primer on Japanese garden aesthetics for the general public; as a useful snapshot guide for the observant traveler and; as an elegant and well-photographed coffee table addition – I bought the larger hard cover edition – to one’s personal library.
I must confess that for many years in Japan, I didn’t see what was special about these gardens – many of which I’d been to – as I was more used to the wide-open spaces and the ebullient botanical garden approaches elsewhere in the world. I saw the mossy greens, small pathways, streams, rock patterns, sculpted bushes or bare attempts at topiary in many Japanese gardens in the same way we’d compare the natural world to a zoo, an attempt to replicate a waning natural world. The famously austere, dry-landscape and raked garden of Ryoanji, with its 15 stones set on white gravel, I thought befuddling upon visiting there for the first time in the late 1980s. That was mistaken and I regret the earlier biases and lack of understanding.
The author here is very careful to locate his entries not just within their geographical and natural settings but also within vital cultural and historical backgrounds, both of which will guide newcomers to Japanese aesthetics. These gardens, the author tells us, display significant cosmological symbolism as well as make use of borrowings from Chinese geometric forms and thus there's much more to see in these small garden worlds than mere plants, streams, rocks and other arrangements.
While not precisely targeted at specialists, 100 Japanese Gardens would not be out of place for their casual enjoyment. For the average reader, it is a treat. The pages and entries are well organized and while, in large part, the main focus is on the Kyoto-Nara nexus and Greater Tokyo regions, the hinterland is not ignored, and the author (Full Disclosure: I knew the author in Japan and have reviewed another of his books about that country), does not neglect the hinterlands. He describes gardens as far south as Ishigaki, and island 428 kilometers south of Okinawa, and as far north as Hakodate on Hokkaido.
There's one recommendation I would suggest to purchasers who do have a chance to visit Japan and see some of these gardens. As this book describes 100 gardens – to have done more might have been cumbersome from a publication standpoint – the interested reader may wish to explore other gardens in the Japanese archipelago, fortified as he or she now is after reading this book with a basic understanding of their form and function.
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Top reviews from other countries
Allan Schrattenholz
The essence of beaty on white pages.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2014Rev Inso
Pretty good. I have most Japanese gardening books available ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2017