Japanese Garden Architecture

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Japanese Gardens are designed with a purpose, every detail has meaning and every element symbolizes something. Gardens were usually built for wealthy asristocrats or people of power. Early designs of Japanese gardens consisted of important religious influences and gave natural objects significance such as in Shinto, Buddhism, and Daoist Beliefs.
In Shinto beliefs, gardens were designed as a purified and cleansed space for the arrival of kami. Kami are sacred spirits of Shinto and great rocks that were laid out carefully in design, lakes, ponds, ancient trees, and other elements of nature would represent the influence of Shinto in Japanese garden layouts. These places that showed Shinto influence were called “niwa”, which meant a pure place in garden terms. Designers were often called “niwa shi” meaning garden masters.
Early Japanese gardens also incorporated Buddhist beliefs in their designs. Mythical mountains, islands and seas were use as a form of symbolization in design. In other sense, Daoism used these same mythical beliefs but used them as isle of the immortals. These interpretations were represented in forms of stone groupings, and each stone was intentionally laid out positioned as a meaning to the scenery. This played a role in the 14th century often.

Buddhism and Daoism beliefs were brought from Korea and China. There were temporary periods where these countries opened its doors to share culture and religious beliefs, fine arts, food spices, etc. Therefore, it’s strongly believed that early gardens in Japan evolved from Korean or Chinese models.
The garden of Kinkaku-Ji is laid out in a Zen-Buddhist style that reflects on Chinese influence. Ideas were borrowed from Taoism philosophy. Zen Buddhism emerged from ch...

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...to the shogun. Stone placing served as islands to imitate true nature. Stone placing is very important in Japanese gardens these days. It has to be placed by Japanese’s garden design masters. (Figure 7)

Waterfalls
The waterfall in kinkaku-ji is located to the North of the pavilion and is consisting of a combination of the cascade and carp element. The carp serves as a metaphor that if traveled successfully to the upper part of the river it will change into a dragon achieving enlightenment in mythology, which is believed by the Japanese and Chinese. There’s a splash stone and its located on the bottom of the gardens cascade. This doesn’t necessarily have to read symbolically. In Japanese gardens waterfalls are usually the source of water intake. They can also serve as dry cascades called kare taki, and implies the fall of water. (Figure 8)

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