Franfois Berthier - University College Cork
Franfois BerthierReadinglnthe RocksTHE JAPANESE DRY LANDSCAPE GARDENTranslated and with a Philosophical Essay by Graham ParkesTHEUNIVERSITYOFCHICAGOPRESS CHICAGOANDLONDON
The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape GardenA Philosophical Essay by Graham ParkesSaihoji-recently better known as Kokedera, the "MossTemple"-lies nestled against the hills bordering Kyoto onthe west, and harbors the oldest surviving example of karesansui. When visiting the dry landscape there, the best strategy(after the obligatory calligraphy and chanting of the HeartSutra) is to take up a position at the rear of the phalanx ofvisitors as it makes its way around the famous pond of thelower garden. This will allow one later to linger awhile inundisturbed contemplation of the upper garden, after theothers have moved off down the hill to the main templebuildings and exit. From the steep path that leads up to thegarden, one sees to the left a magnificent group of rocks85
floating on a bed of moss and arranged in the "turtle-island"style, evoking the Daoist Isles of the Immortals. This groupwas probably set originally on a sea of white gravel, whichwas dispersed and covered by moss during a period whenthe temple grounds were left derelict.! It is a wonderfullydown-to-earth rendering of the paradisal Chinese topos. Theangular shapes of the rocks together with their arrangement,which leaves spaces among them, make for a compositionthat looks perfect from whatever angle it is viewed.The turtle-island group is like an overture to the mainbody of the work, the "dry cascade" (karetaki) in the uppermost part of the garden. Here fifty or so rocks in threetiers descend the hillside, evoking a waterfall deep in themountains. Most of the rocks are covered with lichen andsurrounded by "pools" of moss. They are bordered by somemoderate-sized trees, several of which describe graceful arcsover the edges of the arrangement. The moss, together withthe lichen that clothes the rocks in varying thicknesses, offersa remarkable array of colors: browns, dark grays, mauves,oranges, and many shades of sometimes iridescent green. Afew miniature ferns and a scattering of dead pine needlesadd contrasting touches. The warm colors of the moss poolsstand out against the cooler hues of the bare stone, and whenwetted by rain all the colors become impressively more saturated. If the sun is shining, its rays filter through the treesand highlight different elements of the composition differentially. When the branches sway in the wind, light and shadeplay slowly over the entire scene, the movements accentuating at first the stillness of the rocks. Further contemplation86brings to mind Zen master Dagen's talk of "mountains flowing and water not flowing."2In corresponding natural settings-what the Japanesecall shotoku no sansui, landscape "as in life"-adoption of theappropriate perspective can reveal rock configurations ofremarkable beauty, in which all elements are in proper interrelation. The viewing area at the foot of the dry cascade isnow quite restricted, allowing minimal variation of standpoint, but the composition is nonetheless breathtaking in its"rightness." Not even Cezanne, that consummate positionerof rocks in relation to trees-albeit in two dimensionscould have effected a more exquisite arrangement. Cezanne'swork is invoked by the younger of the two female protagonists (both of whom are artists) in Kawabata's great novelBeauty and Sadness. The older woman, Otoko, has proposeda visit to Saihaji in the hope that she can "absorb a little ofthe strength [of this] oldest and most powerful of all rockgardens." But the experience turns out to be unexpectedlyoverwhelming. "The priest Muso's rock garden, weatheredfor centuries, had taken on such an antique patina that therocks looked as if they had always been there. However,their stiff, angular forms left no doubt that it was a humancomposition, and Otoko had never felt its pressure asintensely as she did now. 'Shall we go home?' she asked.'The rocks are beginning to frighten me."'3 What is it aboutthe power of this garden that makes it so disturbing that itverges on the frightening?The hill behind the upper garden is named Kainzan,after the mountain hermitage of the Tang dynasty Chan87
master Liang Zuozhu, and so some commentators claimthat the tiers of rocks evoke the steep path leading up to histemple, and represent more generally the difficult ascent tothe summit of Zen teaching and practice. Others see it asmerely the remains of an actual series of steps leading toanother building in the temple-as something crafted, butnot really a work of art at all. Since the lower garden isknown to represent the Pure Land (jodo), the Western Paradise of Amida, and the upper garden the defilement of thisworld (edo), yet other scholars see the "turtle-island" groupof rocks as evoking Mount Horai and the dry cascade as away leading out of the world of defilement. 4Whatever the significance of this earliest example ofthe karesansui garden-and we shall be returning to it fora discussion of its unsettling atmosphere-several of itsfeatures point us back to China. And given the enormousinfluence of Chinese ideas and practices on the development of garden making in Japan, we do well to begin byreviewing that history.Rocks and Stone in ChinaFew civilizations have revered stone and rock as greatly asthe Chinese (though the Japanese are foremost among thosefew). A cosmogonic myth from ancient China depicts the skyas a vast cave, and mountains as fragments that came loosefrom the vault of heaven and ended up on earth. These hugestone fragments in falling through the air became charged88with vast amounts of cosmic energy, or qi (ch'i), beforeembedding themselves in the earth.s As in other places,there is prehistorical evidence in China of cults in whichstone plays a key role. But China is distinguished by havingrecords of rocks being arranged (in emperors' parks) datingback over two thousand years. 6 At first a prerogative of theimperial family, enthusiasm for stone and the mineral kingdom then spread to the literati, and it endures in the cultureto this day.By contrast with our sharp distinction between theanimate and inanimate (with rocks falling on the lifeless sideof the divide), the ancient Chinese world view understandsall natural phenomena, including humans, as being animatedby the psychophysical energy known as qi. This energy, withits polarities of yin and yang, ranges along a spectrum fromrarified to condensed-forming a continuum, by contrastwith our dichotomies between matter and spirit or physicaland psychical. Rather than positing a world of reality behindand separate from the world of ordinary experience, Chinesethought has generally sought to understand the transformational processes that underlie the current world of appearances. Chinese medicine, acupuncture especially, is predicated on the idea of balancing yin and yang energies withinthe body, and harmonizing the flows of qi constituting thehuman frame with the larger cosmic circulation of energiesoutside it.The two great powers in Chinese cosmology are thoseof heaven and earth, the prime manifestations of yang andyin energies. In this sense rock, as earth, is yin; but insofar as89
stone thrusts up from the earth in the form of volcanoesand mountains it is considered yang. In relation to the basicelement of water, which is yin, rock in its hardness againmanifests yang energy. The poles of yang and yin also connote"activity" and "structure," so that the patterns that emergefrom the interaction between heaven and earth are understood as "expressions of organization operating on energy."7John Hay's monograph Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earthtakes its title from two texts cited in an entry on stone froman eighteenth-century encyclopedia.The essential energy of earth forms rock . Rocks are kernels ofenergy; the generation of rock from energy is like the body's arterial system producing nails and teeth .The earth has the famous mountains as its support, . rocksare its bones. 8What is significant here is not so much the idea of rock asbone of the earth but of stone as a concentration of earth's"essential energy." Rocks are also called "roots of the clouds,"an expression deriving from the mists that surround the collision of water with rock, and from the vapors that gatheraround the peaks of mountains or enshroud the tops of cliffsand ridges. Some of the rocks most admired by the Chineseresemble clouds, and in landscape painting mountains areoften depicted not so much accompanied by clouds as themselves looking like heaps of cumulus. 9The science that deals with our relations to terrainand environment is called fengshut usually translated as"geomancy" (earth divination), though the literal meaning90is "wind water." The aim offengshui practice is to ensurethat the places in which one lives and works, from residencesand gardens to offices and workshops, are set up in such away that one's activities are harmonized with the greaterpatternings of qi that inform the environs. Fran.;;:ois Jullienwrites eloquently of the "lifelines" (shi) that geomancydetects in the configuration of terrain. Drawing on a classictext by Guo Pu from the fourth-century, he writes: "Let usexperience 'physics' as the single 'breath at the origin ofthings, forever circulating,' which flows through the wholeof space, endlessly engendering all existing things, 'deployingitself continuously in the great process of the coming-to-beand transformation of the world' and 'filling every individualspecies through and through.'" This "vital breath" is itselfinvisible, though discernible in the contours of landscape.Not all places are alike: they differ according to the patternsand concentrations of the energy flowing through them.Since this qi is also what animates human beings, peopleliving in sites where the circulations of the vital breath aremore intense will flourish more energetically: "By rootingone's dwelling here rather than elsewhere, one locks into thevery vitality of the world [and] taps the energy of thingsmore directly."IDSince rocks of unusual size or shape are special conduitsor reservoirs for qi, beneficial effects will flow from being intheir presence. The garden thereby becomes a site not onlyfor aesthetic contemplation but also for self-cultivation, sincethe qi of the rocks will be enhanced by the flows of energyamong the other natural components there. In a work called91
Eulogy to the Lodestone, Guo Pu wonders at the inscrutableoperations and interactions of the phenomena that fengshuitries to fathom:Lodestone draws in iron, Amber picks up mustard seeds.Energy invisibly passes. Cosmic numerology mysteriously matches.Things respond to each other, In ways beyond our knowingYChinese thought is especially fond of analogies betweenmicrocosm and macrocosm, so that the sense of correspondence between rocks and mountains runs deeper than meresymbolizationY Mountains as the most majestic expressionsof natural forces were regarded as especially numinousbeings: Five Sacred Peaks stood for the center of the worldand its four cardinal points. Rocks were thought to partakeof the powers of the mountain less through their resemblingits outward appearance than for their being true microcosms,animated by the same telluric energies that form the heightsand peaks. The identity between rocks and mountains isemphasized in numerous treatises on Chinese landscapepainting, or shanshui (literally: "mountains waters"). Theintroduction to the famous twelfth-century treatise by DuWan, the Yunlin Shipu (Cloud Forest catalogue of rocks),begins: "The purest energy of the heaven-earth worldcoalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic . Within the size of afist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs."13 Thisidea that the beauty of the macrocosm is concentrated in themicrocosm will become a major principle in the art of therock garden in Japan.92Given the traditional reverence in China for naturalphenomena, it is not surprising that Buddhist thoughtshould take a distinctively Chinese turn after being transplanted from India during the first century CEo The legendary patriarch of the Chan (Zen) School of Buddhism, theIndian monk Bodhidharma, by some accounts spent nineyears after coming to China meditating in front of the rockface of a cliff. (Buddhist arhats are often depicted seated onpedestals of rock or in caves, and there is a famous paintingof Bodhidharma in a cave of rock by the Japanese painterSesshii.) A significant development took place in the earlyTang dynasty (618-907), in which the Mahayana Buddhistextension of the promise of salvation to "all sentient beings,"based on the "dependent co-arising" of all things, was takento its logical conclusion. A philosopher by the name of Jizangwrote of the" Attainment of Buddhahood by Plants andTrees," and a later thinker, Zhanran from the TiantaiSchool, argued that "even non-sentient beings have Buddhanature." 14Therefore we may know that the single mind of a single particleof dust comprises the mind-nature of all sentient beings andBuddhas . Therefore, when we speak of all things, why shouldexception be made in the case of a tiny particle of dust? Whyshould the substance of "suchness" pertain exclusively to "us" andnot to "others"? .Who, then is "animate" and who "inanimate"? Within theAssembly of the Lotus, all are present without division. In the caseof grass, trees, and the soil, what difference is there between the93
four kinds of atoms? Whether they merely lift their feet or energetically traverse the long path, they will all reach [Nirvana].15The Tiantai School was transmitted to Japan (as TendaiBuddhism) by the monk Saicho, who picked up the line ofthinking developed by Zhanran and was the first in Japan towrite of "the Buddha-nature of trees and rocks" (mokusekibussho). The seeds of these ideas would find especially fertileground in the minds of some formidable Japanese thinkersduring the following few centuries.Chinese Petromania and LitholatryA central feature of ancient Daoist lore was the belief that arace of Immortals inhabited floating islands far in the easternseas. This occasioned repeated attempts during the Qin andHan dynasties (from the third century BCE to the third CE)to discover these sites and find the elixir of immortality.As mentioned in the main text, rather than going out tosearch for their islands himself, the Han dynasty emperorWudi (140-89 BCE) attempted to entice the Immortals byconstructing rocky islands of his own in ponds of the palacegarden. Since the floating Isles of the Immortals were mountains, they were inherently unstable, so the Lord of Heavenhad instructed giant turtles to carry them on their backs tostabilize them. For this reason they are often represented inChinese gardens as resting on turtle-shaped rocks ratherthan floating on the sea. Buddhist mythology too was influ-94ential on garden making: the notion of a huge mountain,Mount Sumeru, at the center of the universe and surroundedby mountains separated by oceans, as well as the idea ofAmida's Western Paradise to which true believers would betransported after death, were easily assimilated to the Daoistview of the Isles of the Immortals. Representations of Amida'sParadise would later become common in Japanese gardens,as would "Shumisen" rocks standing for Mount Sumeru.A rich merchant during the Han dynasty is remembered for having built an enormous garden renowned forthe excellence of its rocks, and whose salient feature was anartificial mountain (jiashan) over thirty meters high. 16 Thishubris-since in China only emperors and princes weresupposed to display their wealth by building parks andgardens-brought dire results: the man was found guiltyof "a crime" and executed. Nevertheless, the establishmentof private estates gradually became customary, and themerchant's rock mountain established a tradition in gardenmaking. During the reign of the Wei emperor Xiao Mingdi(early sixth century), a minister of agriculture created anestate known as "Mountain of Bright Beauty": "He built upa mountain as if it were a work of Nature, with piled-uppeaks and multiple ranges rising in steep succession, withdeep ravines and caverns and gullies tortuously linked."I?In the year 607 the Sui emperor Yangdi built a magnificent park near his capital of Luoyang. He had four enormous lakes dug, and several rocky islands built in each.Although this had been done before, the scale of his projectwas unprecedented, and Yangdi's "Western Park" is signifi-95
cant because of its influence on imperial gardens in Japan.The first official embassy from Japan arrived in Luoyang inthe autumn of 607, and the visitors from the Eastern Islandswere in all likelihood shown the Western Park. The earliestmention of a landscaped garden with a lake, adjacent to theJapanese imperial palace, dates from the year 611.18The emperor Ming Huang, who ruled China for thefirst half of the eighth century, was famous for building agarden, located at a hot springs, which contained a lake witha miniature mountain of lapis lazuli in the middle. This stylealso endured, for when Kubilai Khan (grandson of Ghengis)moved his capital to Beijing several centuries later, he hadgardens built and parks furnished with lapis lazuli. MarcoPolo appears to have been suitably impressed: "The rock isintensely green, so that trees and rocks alike are as green asgreen can be, and there is no other color to be seen." 19 It issad that such monochrome extravaganzas can now be seenonly in the imagination.Shortly before the Japanese Tendai founder Saichowas born, in the year 753, the eminent Buddhist monk Jianzhen (Jpn., Ganjin) finally succeeded, after several abortivesea voyages, in making his way to Japan. He took withhim many cultural items from the Tang, especially Buddhistscriptures and works of art, and he was soon invited by theemperor Seimu to establish a Buddhist temple in the capitalof Heijo-kyo (the present-day Nara). Among the artisansthat accompanied him were said to be garden makers, whowill have found the Japanese soil well prepared for their art.The timing was auspicious, since the practice of making rock96gardens attained a special degree of flourishing during theTang dynasty.The scholar-poet and high official Li Deyu built afamous rock garden in his estate near Luoyang, in which hearranged spectacular specimens brought in from many different parts of the country. The most spectacular came fromLake Tai (Tai Hu, also known as "Grand Lake") nearSuzhou and Shanghai, in the heart of literati culture in thesoutheast. Li dignified the best rocks in his collection byhaving the words youdao ("possessing the Way") incised onthem, and such inscriptions became common practice forenthusiasts. 2o The other great rock connoisseur of the periodwas his rival Niu Sengru, who also built a celebrated gardennear Luoyang. The poet Bai Juyi was a friend of both men,and he produced a number of poems celebrating the beautyof their rock collections. The earliest description we have ofa Taihu rock, which was to become the most highly prizedkind in China, comes from one of Bai's poems.Its controlling spirit overpowers the bamboo and trees,Its manifested energy dominates the pavilions and terrace.From its interior rise quiet whispers,Is it the womb of winds?Sharp swords show in its angular edges,Their ringing resonance clearer than jasper chimes.Its great shape seems to move,Its massive forces seem on the brink of collapse.21The geology of the Lake Tai area is remarkable in that therock there is formed from limestone deposits nearly 30097
million years old. 22 These ancient formations were corrodedinto extravagant shapes when the area was covered by sea,and were then worked and sculpted by the action of hardpebbles in the lake during storms. Especially fine spec
The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden A Philosophical Essay by Graham Parkes Saihoji-recently better known as Kokedera, the "Moss Temple"-lies nestled against the hills bordering Kyoto on the west, and harbors the oldest surviving example of karesan sui. When visiting th
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