JAPAN AND THE ART OF NATURE
Perfecting what already exists while preserving its essence is the philosophy behind the Japanese garden, reveals Monty Don in his new TV series
LAST year I made two trips to Japan to film a couple of programmes on Japanese gardens for the BBC. The plan was to see as many different kinds and styles as possible in the time available. We were extraordinarily lucky on both trips to have glorious weather, and we timed it perfectly for hanami, the festival celebrating the amazing display of cherry blossom in spring, and the dramatic tints of maples in the momijigari, or ‘red leaf hunting’, season in autumn. Just to see these displays justified going, but there is so much more to Japanese gardens than that.
For many in the West, Japan is still a surprisingly distant and unknown culture. Of all the countries I’ve visited, it remains the most enigmatic (I also went there in 2007 for my series Around The World In 80 Gardens, but that was only for five days, exclusively in Kyoto, and focused on Zen gardens only). The global cultural divide in gardens, as in almost all other areas of life, remains huge.
There was a flurry of Japanese-inspired gardens in this country in the years before the First World War as a result of a hugely successful Japanese exhibition at White City in 1910. The best preserved of these is at Tatton Park in Cheshire. But as I’ve increasingly realised over the past year, unless you have an intimate knowledge of Japanese culture, you can’t really understand their gardens, let alone make one. To see true Japanese gardens you must go to Japan.
For the Japanese, gardens are an essential part of their cultural identity, and everything in a Japanese garden is part of a code and pattern that’s evolved as much through social and cultural, as creative, growth.
Japanese gardens are an expression of a belief or social aesthetic as much as a personal one. Kaizen, the concept of gradual improvement, aiming to perfect what already exists while preserving its essence, is as evident in their gardens as it is in their food or calligraphy. This means there’s a very limited range of garden styles and ideas – but a bewildering variety of expression and subtleties within that range.
Originality is treated warily because inherent in it is departure from the group, and the received ideas and rules. To be truly original you have to become an outsider and that, in Japan, is a terrible fate. So mastery involves learning established wisdom and skills and then slowly and with endless care perfecting them and – perhaps – adding something to them. And the greatest mastery is to make something look so simple and natural that it appears hardly anything’s happened at all.
Although the Japanese love nature and romanticise the mountains and sea, the hand of man is never absent from any part of a garden – especially when they want it to look natural. In the garden this is exemplified by niwaki, or the pruning of trees and shrubs. These are never left to grow naturally but are invariably highly trained and astonishingly skilfully pruned, in order that they might capture the true essence of naturalness.
Another example is the struts holding up the branches of pines, either to train them or to support
them in maturity. When western visitors first see these they are confusing, because no attempt is made to hide them or even to minimise their use. But the props, with their beautifully simple rope ties bound according to an unalterable formula, have become, by virtue of the human skill and judgement in placing them, as much a part of the tree as any of the branches.
So the way that every growing thing in a garden is minutely and painstakingly tended, be it shaping vast pines or weeding individual blades of grass from moss, is all part of the performance. Kaizen, and the goal of perfecting what has been agreed by everybody, must be displayed in every detail. The careless, but stylish, abandon of an English country garden is utterly alien – though much admired.
The simpler the expression of this, the more exact and deeper the degrees of precision. In the karesansui, or Zen dry gardens,
every aspect and element has meaning. This then is pondered on and appreciated as an aid to meditation – the point of which is to completely empty your mind in order that there is space for enlightenment, or satori, to come flooding in.
When I visit any garden I always walk around it for ten to 20 minutes, trying to tune in to the spirit of the place. But Japanese gardens are not intended for casual mooching.
THERE are the stroll gardens, a style based around a walk with a series of carefully arranged viewpoints along a prescribed – and at times policed – path. The route usually takes you around a pond with rocks and trees set in moss and grass along the way. Zen dry gardens are designed to be viewed from a static position and are strictly not for walking in or on at all, save for the monk whose duty it is to rake the gravel. Tea gardens have one narrow path that is carefully designed to lead you ever more slowly and deliberately to the tea house. Going off piste is not an option. There is only one way, which is the right way. To ignore or challenge that is considered deeply disrespectful.
In all, I visited more than 30 gardens as well as public parks, nurseries, tool-makers and lanterncarvers, and had masterclasses in bonsai, ikebana (flower arranging) and kokedama – planting a single specimen such as a fern in a small ball of damp soil which is wrapped in moss and suspended from a cord. It was all fascinating and I saw some of the most beautiful gardens in the world. But in truth I feel I’ve only scratched the surface. To really understand them I’d have to immerse myself in little else for the rest of my days.
However, what I have brought back to my own garden is the realisation that attention to detail really matters.
In Japanese gardens of any kind, no detail is too small or unimportant for it not to be both beautiful and done with care and skill. Get that right and almost everything else will follow.