Nobles’ estates, conceived on a splendid scale, conjured grand scenery: Gardens echoed distant shorelines marked by jetting rock outlines and evoked cloud-shrouded mountain scenes depicted in ancient Chinese poetry and painting. The garden was a visual reinforcement of learned aesthetic concepts beloved by the court.
The old Imperial Palace gardens remain some of the country’s loveliest displays of landscape architecture. Their gardeners attract the best pupils of the art as well as the finest specimens of flora and rocks. Retaining its centuries-old design, the courtyard is a span of white, raked gravel that evokes the yuniwa (a sacred space) at shrines. Two flowering trees, a cherry and trifoliate orange, accent the quiet expanse. The area served as a site for religious ceremonies related to the court and was presided over by the emperor, once viewed as a divine descendant of the Sun Goddess. The limited grounds open to visitors are rich with moss, low sculpted pine and cedar, and other horticultural masterpieces.
Autumn as a backdrop for a magnificent gate shingled with cedar bark.
The shadow of a curved eave intersects the courtyard’s raked surface.
A picturesque arched bridge leads to another realm.
A slender waterfall softens the pond’s rocky edge.
Beyond the vermilion gate, the grounds of the old palace.
Roots entwine their bed of moss.
Another exquisite garden within the Imperial Park is at Sento Gosho, the villa of retired Emperor Gomizuno (1596– 1680). Constructed in 1600, the original buildings were destroyed several times by fire, but the stroll garden remains. It is an aesthetic miracle of quietude, simplicity, and beauty in the middle of the city.
Struts prop a precious, aged maple.
A moss-rimmed bridge with a simple wooden railing introduces a touch of rusticity, an essential element, even in imperial gardens.
After receiving permission from the Imperial Household Agency, visitors can take an hour-long tour, which leads across a trellis-covered bridge that is magnificent in May when it is lush with tendrils of purple and white wisteria. Recalling thousand-year-old Heian gardens, the paths wind past a slightly elevated waterfall that empties into a large pond, once used for boating. The grounds feature azalea, boxwood bushes, and hedges of wild mountain rose and camellia distributed and sculpted with Zen-like restraint.
Next to a shoreline is a resting place of perfectly rounded stones, a gift from the lord of a clan in eastern Japan. Each stone was valued for its shape and color, wrapped individually in silk and presented to the appreciative emperor.
Guests are encouraged not to dawdle along the paths. But it is nearly impossible not to linger, as the designers intended, and to marvel at the ingenuity of the plan and the exquisite scenic perspective from each view—a privilege previously granted only to members of the imperial court.
Approach to the shadow-dappled bridge.
The limber boughs of a maple.
As a symbol of passage, the rock bridge fulfills its aesthetic and spiritual purpose.
NIJO CASTLE GARDEN
When the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu took control of Japan, he moved the capital to Edo, now named Tokyo.
But in 1603, for administrative purposes and to retain his powerful connections to the court, Tokugawa built Nijo Castle in Kyoto. Not designed for military purposes, its buildings resemble no other fortress in Japan, where frequent warfare dictated architecture and necessitated construction on strategic, elevated sites.
The Tokugawas were warriors, but they wanted Nijo to be a monument to their refinement as well as their power. The moat and donjons, then, are mainly symbolic displays of military strength; the gardens make a show of economic and martial power. As intended, the grounds and buildings successfully combine the aesthetics and culture of the court with manifestations of power. Famed artists of the Kano School captured this fusion in the castle’s screens and doors, painted with lavish portraits of fierce animals such as eagles and tigers.
The gardens, too, have a military feel, but are framed, as in ancient courtly tradition, by the doorways of the corridors that circle the main building. Large stones and low trees—including exotic cycads brought from more tropical climes—give this garden a masculine feel and also help prevent intruders from approaching unseen.
The castle’s gleaming southeast turret, a beloved Kyoto landmark.
The remains of a turret overlook the castle granary in early spring.
A mother and grandmother take a toddler on her first cherry-blossom viewing.
A single pine tree requires a whole day’s attention by a gardener.
A rocky shore with pebble beach alludes to Japan’s coastline.
The back garden to the west has several large ponds, which are set among low, grass-covered mounds interspersed with resplendent pines and gatherings of boulders at water’s edge.
The garden to the north has more recent plantings, including large Japanese pagoda trees (enju) rarely seen in gardens. Their dominant shape and height, not easily incorporated into smaller gardens, embody the comfortable spaciousness of wealth and power.
While expressing the confidence and strength of military rulers, Nijo’s overall effect is softened in spring by bountiful plantings of cherry trees. Lighted displays of the trees in bloom are one of April’s biggest nighttime attractions. The soft loveliness, set against the muscular architecture, highlights the disparate yet harmonized sides of Kyoto’s former warlords and the castle they built.
Inner castle walls, comprised of massive horizontal stonework.
A grey heron patrols its watery domain.
A slender, young hanging cherry.