San Francisco

Japanese Architects, Building Nature

Japanese Tea Garden

A twisted forest canopy, a vast expanse of desert, a roaring waterfall at cliff’s end. What makes these polar opposites “nature”? Most would say the absence of artificial creation lends nature its defining characteristic. However, where is the line drawn? What makes a road different from the network of tunnels burrowed by a family of prairie dogs or a dam built by a beaver? Of course, there is the factor that roads are built by humans – 

but what makes our creation different than those of other living beings, and does this make us incapable of creating our own nature? 

After driving through the staggering hills of San Francisco, we stopped in front of the Japanese Tea Garden. I opened the car door to reveal a great gate, a twenty-feet tall, red and brown mass of wood with slanted roofs, which subtly curved upward at each end in traditional Japanese fashion. 

Walking through that gate, I truly felt as if I had been plucked from the San Francisco cityscape and dropped into 900 A.D. Kyoto. Instead of the familiar, towering pine trees of California, miniature trees that only reached my shoulders lined the walkways. Yet, each tree carried the same grandeur of the pristine, ancient redwoods one would find in Yosemite. Unlike these great redwood forests of North America, however, each tree was remarkably unique. Some stood straight up, splitting into multiple branches, dangling dense clusters of needles over my head, while others slanted over the scattered waterways, bending back upward once the trunk hung above the water. Nestled amongst these miniature trees lay bushes, which were just as diverse. The bushes grew a variety of foliage, from evenly-spaced light-green leaves to thick manes of bold magenta flowers. Their shapes were either well rounded, with solid and mottled covers, or fragmented, resembling a tight bunch of mushrooms with only the caps exposed. 

The diversity and irregularities did not end at the greenery. Rather, these characteristics defined every aspect of the garden, in every nook and cranny. Even the very pathways which led throughout the garden changed unexpectedly. Each path was heterogeneous; whether in its slant or forking pattern, whether it was built on solid ground or over rippling waterways. They may gradually climb soft hills or end abruptly at a set of steep stairs, as if to lead up the face of a cliff. Over each waterway, no two bridges were the same. In terms of material, some were made of singular, isolated stones, placed to mimic the stepping stones in a stream. Other bridges were great marble slabs, rectangular blocks aged with rugged surfaces and edges, implying decades of weathering from flood cycles. Every step in the Japanese Tea Garden was truly unique, distinct, and independent from the next. Almost like a step in nature. 

The man-made structures and apparatuses further added to the environment of the Japanese Tea Garden. The stone lanterns, known as tōrō, had gently curved roofs covered in patches of moss and lichen growth. They lay low to the ground, melding into the gentle hills, as if they were a natural rock formation. Others were taller, resembling a smaller tōrō sitting upon a pillar, and were subtly hidden among some saplings. The shrines, in contrast, were imposing, wooden structures painted in a bright red, complementing the greenery around them. Instead of detracting from the environment, the color and complexity helped reinforce the natural feeling of the garden, making the well pruned trees and tame grass seem wild in comparison. 

Each aspect of the garden, whether it is the trees, the rocks, or the waterways, is deliberate.  The elements that define this garden are specifically placed or constructed based on aesthetic rules that, although evolving with time, date back a thousand years. Written works, the oldest of which is Sakuteiki, written in the 11th century, outline these artistic landscaping guidelines.  Sakuteiki formed the foundation for an architect’s technique – and their thought. From the start, the book describes how to represent and visualize the most “interesting aspects of nature” in the garden (Takei and Keane 195). This selective inclusion is important because not all parts of nature are “interesting;” not everything in nature inspires and invokes a strong sense of beauty. By modeling only the best parts, all of the “extraneous” elements are weeded out, in some ways, distilling or purifying nature (Takei and Keane 195). 

Though Japanese gardens take inspiration from nature, they are not simply a one-to-one representation of it; building a garden is an interpretive and artistic endeavor. All of the gardens from the Heian period, the time during which Sakuteiki was written, were based on a very narrow locale, as only nature close to the Heian capital (modern day Kyoto) were well-observed by garden architects. However, the implications of the Heian natural setting extend beyond the limitations to the Heian gardener’s toolkit: the nature surrounding them was, in a way, a direct product of man. In the process of being built, the Heian capital drew upon the natural resources of its surroundings, resulting in much of the great old trees being felled, making way for a secondary growth of fast-growing plants to replace them (Takei and Keane 45). Thus, the very “nature” of the Heian capital was already a consequence of man, and not truly a pristine natural environment.   

The art of Japanese gardens is almost entirely built around a human manifestation and interpretation of nature. These gardens, including the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, are derivatives of nature which are meant entirely to extract the greatest parts of nature and enhance them. The garden is nonexistent without the work of mankind and the centuries it took to develop such a sophisticated gardening practice. Yet, it exudes the fuzei, the spirit, or essence, of nature that one would think only existed in a pristine environment unknown to humanity (Takei and Keane 42). It invokes the same feelings of peace and tranquility one would find at a lake deep in the woods, the same awe stirred up within oneself upon the sight of a great lone tree at the top of a hill.  Everything from the way the water flows through the rocks which bridges them, to the shape of the trees, to the forking of the paths, all seem to suggest that a power beyond our capability has created the garden. And still, at its core, the garden is a work of art which stems almost solely from humanity itself, in our attempt to imitate, improve, and interpret what nature provides. 

Takei Jirō, and Marc P. Keane. Sakuteiki, Visions of the Japanese Garden: a Modern Translation of Japan's Gardening Classic. Tuttle Pub., 2001. 

Words: Tushar Sondhi

Photos: Emmanuel Flores