Japanese Gardens Are Works Of Art

Japanese gardens are definitely different from other kinds of gardens. The uniqueness of Japanese gardens comes from centuries of influence of different parts of Japanese history. It is also affected by the person who planted and tended the garden. Like most groups of people, Japanese are highly individualistic. Each garden has a character as special as the one who created it.

In the past, Japanese gardens were considered so special that very few people were allowed to see them. In the last hundred years, this has changed. More and more people are allowed to experience what a Japanese garden is like.

Japanese gardens were also cut off because people, especially the ruling elite and the religious classes, used them as places of peace and meditation. They went to their gardens to get away from it all and think deeply about the universe and other issues. A garden in Kyoto was specifically built for an emperor to spend his years in peace. The Japanese garden called the Garden of the Silver Pavilion was used by a famous warrior as a shelter from the violence that mostly made up his life.

Japanese gardens were built originally to represent a utopia or paradise. They were a manifestation of religious beliefs that came from China in the 6th century. Specifically, it is Buddhist beliefs that influenced the Japanese gardens of the past and the present. They all show the influence of Zen Buddhism and Chinese mythology that were imported to Japan over the centuries.

Japanese gardens are considered to be complex and difficult to manage from the Western point of view. Westerners do not see gardens as expressions of religious or political beliefs. Most Western gardens are basically just smaller versions of a farm. They perform a function which is to provide cheap produce for the Western family.

Japanese gardens have philosophical and religious elements. Every part of a Japanese garden has a reason for being there. Every stone, plant and garden accessory is an expression of the beliefs of the person who planted it. They are not meant to function as a small version of a farm. A Japanese garden is more like an expression of art. It is like a book or a painting. Books and paintings are expressions of person’s mind. This holds true for Japanese gardens.

One element that Japanese gardens definitely want to represent is water. Water is very important to the Japanese. The country of Japan is made up of a group of islands. Japanese had to traverse water to go from one place to another for most of their history. Water played an important role in their lives and they wanted to see it in their gardens. Many Japanese gardens have water bodies. Even if they don’t want have water bodies, water is still there in a symbolic sense. In a Japanese garden, water is represented by gray gravel or sand. The owner of the garden rakes the sand to represent the waves of the ocean.

Japanese gardens are symbolic representations of what a person thinks about the universe. This is why Japanese gardens differ from Western gardens.

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