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History (Page 3) |
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In antiquity the word for "garden" was shima, meaning "island." Situated in an expanse of water, the island would constitute the heart of the garden. Gardens did not have merely a decorative function, but they also possessed a symbolic meaning. However, today the Japanese word for garden is "niwa," related to the yuniwa of Ise, meaning a space of ground set aside for special purposes.z The art of gardens in Japan goes back to atleast to the 5th century CE. In the Nihonshoki, the Chronicles of Japan, reports that the Emperor Richu and his wide loved relaxing in a boat on a pond filled with carp. This is the first written mention of a Japanese garden. In the gardens of the Heian Period (794-1185) all |
available elements were put to work: trees, grasses, flowers, sand, rocks, and water. There was also a preference for deciduous trees, whose shape and colors would vary with the changing seasons. For example, in the spring: flowers would blossom; in the summer: foliage became greener; in the autumn: foliage took on various hues: orange, red, yellow; and in the winter: branches became bare. These gardens exemplified the Buddhist teaching of the continual cycle of death and rebirth, while also displaying the transitory character of this world in which everything continually changes, like the eternal cycle of the seasons. |
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