{"id":630,"date":"2022-09-26T14:45:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T14:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/?p=630"},"modified":"2022-09-29T08:35:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T08:35:52","slug":"impermanent-spaces-japanese-gardens-and-their-interpretations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/2022\/09\/impermanent-spaces-japanese-gardens-and-their-interpretations\/","title":{"rendered":"Impermanent Spaces: Japanese Gardens and their Interpretations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1892, Lafcadio Hearn published an article in the <\/span>Atlantic Monthly<\/span><\/i> on the unique characteristics of Japanese gardens.\u00a0 Hearn was a writer and teacher, born in Greece and raised in Ireland, who traveled to Japan in 1890 and remained there for the rest of his life.1<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>His article gives a general background on the appearance, history, and symbolism of Japanese gardens for his western readers through a description of his own garden, and ends with the gloomy prediction that \u201c…the old katchi\u00fb-yashiki and its gardens \u2013 will doubtless have vanished forever before many years\u2026 For impermanency is the nature of all, more particularly in Japan, and the changes and the changers shall also be changed until there is found no place for them, and regret is vanity.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>Contrary to his prediction, by 2006 there would be at least 432 Japanese gardens throughout the world.3<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>Rather than disappearing from Japan, their global popularity seems to reflect a common fear of <\/span>the very impermanence that Hearn believed would lead to their disappearance.\u00a0 As spaces, Japanese gardens symbolize the preservation of natural landscapes whose value seems increasingly important as urban centers grow and natural areas diminish.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Henri Lefebvre proposes that as natural spaces disappear, they do not vanish completely.\u00a0 Natural space becomes \u201c…the background of the picture; as decor, and more than decor, it persists everywhere, and every natural detail, every natural object is valued even more as it takes on symbolic weight (the most insignificant animal, trees, grass, and so on).\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>This symbolic weight is clearly identified<\/span> by Hearn, whose account of his own garden is given primarily through descriptions of the symbolic meaning of the rocks, plants, and animals which inhabit it.\u00a0 He describes objects and creatures both physically and through the myths, legends, and traditions which surround them and signify their role in the garden.\u00a0 Not only do they carry individual symbolic meaning, but the garden as a whole is \u201c…at once a picture and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture. For as nature’s scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or of solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labor of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul.”5<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This symbolism or \u201cmood in the soul\u201d acquires a new meaning in light of the western adoption and re-creation of Japanese gardens.\u00a0 Questions arise as to whether the gardens symbolize something inherently Japanese and are therefore only authentic when they are created in Japan according to strict traditions, or whether they symbolize a broader appreciation of nature which can be replicated anywhere in the world.\u00a0 Hearn argues that \u201cIn the foreigner,\u201d the aesthetic complexities of the representation of nature in Japanese gardens, \u201cneeds to be cultivated by study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 His suggestion that non-Japanese people cannot comprehend the full meaning and complexity of this art form is reflected by modern Japanese scholars such as Sato and Kajinishi who argue that Japanese gardens in the West are merely inauthentic reproductions (\u201cJapanese-style gardens\u201d), rather than the real thing.6<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 This idea is taken even further by the notion that Japanese gardens in the late 19th century, lost their authenticity because the Japanese government, being partially controlled by western powers through treaties, recast them embodiments of Japanese nationalism.7<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While questions of authenticity, in Western and Japanese gardens, are highly contested among historians and specialists, the spatial concept of a garden which serves to \u201c…copy faithfully the attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates\u201d is one that captured the imagination of the world.5<\/a><\/sup> \u00a0A place which is designed not only to reflect vanishing natural space, but also to express \u201cmoral lessons\u201d and \u201cabstract ideas\u201d through its design is something which can be universally appreciated.8<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 While the original creator of Hearn\u2019s garden was long gone by the time he owned it and whatever lesson or idea it was meant impart had been forgotten, Hearn believed that, \u201c…as a poem of nature it requires no interpreter.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup> The gardens that exist today, whether ancient or modern, Japanese or Western, built on the practices of artistic tradition or ideologies of nationalism, are, as Christian Tagsold points out, \u201creal places.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> Their histories, symbolic meaning, and authenticity vary, but as places, they are created with intent.\u00a0 They are spaces \u201cconfiscated from nature\u201d and turned into conscious representations of a particular kind of space.10<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 Like the natural spaces they reflect, there is an impermanence in the meaning and understanding of Japanese gardens.\u00a0 Although they are created according to certain principles and meant to represent specific ideas, (moral lessons, nationalist ideology, or western imitations of Japanese spaces) their meaning is constantly changing.<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. <\/span>Elizabeth Bisland, <\/span>The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Volume 1 <\/span><\/i>(Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906). [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. <\/span>Lafcadio Hearn, \u201cIn a Japanese Garden,\u201d <\/span>Atlantic Monthly<\/span><\/i>, July 1892, Volume 70, Issue 417, https:\/\/www.trussel.com\/hearn\/jgarden.htm#Part1. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Christian <\/span>Tagsold, <\/span>Spaces in Translation: Japanese Gardens and the West<\/span><\/i> (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 2, ProQuest Ebook Central. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. <\/span>Henri Lefebvre, <\/span>The Production of Space<\/span><\/i>, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1991), 30. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Hearn, \u201cIn a Japanese Garden.\u201d [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Tagsold, Spaces in Translation<\/i>, 79. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Ibid., 84. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Ibid. [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Tagsold, Spaces in Translation<\/i>, 84. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  10. Lefebvre, The Production of Space<\/i>, 49. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In 1892, Lafcadio Hearn published an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the unique characteristics of Japanese gardens.\u00a0 Hearn was a writer and teacher, born in Greece and raised in Ireland, who traveled to Japan in 1890 and remained there for the rest of his life.1 His article gives a general background on the appearance, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,70],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-japan","tag-japanese-gardens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}