Japanese Stone Gardens: Origins, Meaning, Form

Stephen Mansfield

Mas 2012 · Tuttle Publishing

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Gain some new ideas along with the principles and history of Japanese stone gardening with this useful and beautiful garden design book.

Japanese Stone Gardens provides a comprehensive introduction to the powerful mystique and dynamism of the Japanese stone garden--from their earliest use as props in animistic rituals, to their appropriation by Zen monks and priests to create settings conducive to contemplation and finally to their contemporary uses and meaning. With insightful text and abundant imagery, this book reveals the hidden order of stone gardens and in the process heightens the enthusiast's appreciation of them.

The Japanese stone garden is an art form recognized around the globe. These meditative gardens provide tranquil settings, where visitors can shed the burdens and stresses of modern existence, satisfy an age-old yearning for solitude and repose, and experience the restorative power of art and nature. For this reason, the value of the Japanese stone garden today is arguably even greater than when many of them were created.

Fifteen gardens are featured in this book: some well known, such as the famous temple gardens of Kyoto, others less so, among them gardens spread through the south of Honshu Island and the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu and in faraway Okinawa.

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Donald Richie was born, in Lima, Ohio on April 17, 1924. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Maritime Service as a civilian typist. He explored Tokyo on foot and began to attend the movies, which he wrote about for Stars and Stripes and later for the Japan Times. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University in 1953 and then returned to Japan. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a film curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, but by 1973 he returned to live permanently in Japan. He wrote more than 50 books about all aspects of Japan including film, food, social customs, fables, gardens, temples, folk art, music, pop culture, tattoos and sexual mores. His works include The Inland Sea, Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, and Zen Inklings. He died on February 19, 2013 at the age of 88.