Appreciating Gardens

Mr. Hinohara, I understand your specialty is ukiyo-e from the Edo period, but I find it hard to imagine how commoners living in Edo's tenement houses (nagaya) actually practiced gardening, setting aside the daimyo for a moment.

In Japan's case, the history of gardens goes back to ancient times. In those days, gardens were for the wealthy and the powerful. During the Heian period, a book called "Sakuteiki" (Records of Garden Making) was written, detailing how to construct gardens. It described how to build the vast gardens of the aristocracy.

In the Muromachi period, Zen Buddhism and new Buddhist culture arrived from China, leading to the emergence of so-called karesansui (dry landscape) gardens. Furthermore, entering the Edo period, there were two major trends.

One was still for the wealthy—vast gardens centered around daimyo and court nobles. In Edo specifically, daimyo residences were located throughout the city. Among them were the shimoyashiki (suburban residences) which served as villas. They created expansive natural gardens with large ponds, developing the "stroll garden" (kaiyu-shiki) style where one could enjoy walking through the landscape.

And the other trend was for the commoners and townspeople?

Exactly. As the economic power of the commoners gradually increased during the 18th and 19th centuries, the practice of cultivating plants for horticulture expanded rapidly among them.

In addition to growing plants themselves, commoners would visit famous spots for cherry blossoms or plum blossoms. Plum trees, in particular, were often planted by wealthy merchants in their own estates to create gardens, which they would then open to the public so that commoners could visit and enjoy them during the season.

From the perspective of the owner, it was naturally their private garden, but for the commoners, it felt like a public park.

The famous Kameido Plum Garden, which Van Gogh also imitated—was that also a plum garden located at the home of a wealthy merchant?

That's right. Other places where many plants were grown were temples and shrines. Also, cherry blossom spots were established by the 8th Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, as recreational areas for the common people along the Sumida River, at Gotenyama in Shinagawa, or at Asukayama. Asukayama is still visited by many cherry blossom viewers today, but it was originally developed by the Shogunate.

As a form of entertainment for commoners, they would go flower viewing in such places. Additionally, wealthy merchants would build their own gardens, plant plums or seasonal flowers, and open them up to the general public.

So townspeople also began to create gardens.

Yes, mainly starting in the 19th century. The Mukojima Hyakkaen, which is still a metropolitan garden in Sumida Ward today, was originally built by a merchant named Sahara Kikuu along with other cultured intellectuals, and they enjoyed various literary and artistic activities there.

In the early Edo period, the wealthy classes centered around daimyo and the Shogun's family grew plants in vast gardens. Gradually, however, wealthy townspeople with cultural interests also began to cultivate various plants themselves and trade them.

The profession of "uekiya" (gardener/nurseryman) existed from the beginning. Initially, their work involved maintaining daimyo gardens upon request from those families.

To maintain the gardens, I see.

Correct. From those gardeners, sales to the common people likely spread gradually.

There were also plants that became popular during specific limited periods. Morning glories are a typical example. There was something called "henka asagao" (mutant morning glories), where people would grow flowers with unusual shapes and compete among friends to see who could bloom the most unique one. They would show them to each other in something like a competition or exhibition.

Plants like Ardisia crenata (karatachibana) and Neofinetia falcata (furan) were also resold at high prices, sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands to millions of yen in modern currency.

The people doing this were wealthy samurai and merchants who had relatively comfortable lives and time for leisure. Depending on the era, there were places where samurai and townspeople interacted across social classes through various arts—not just horticulture, but also literature, waka poetry, haikai, or painting. Horticulture also had elements of a sophisticated cultural hobby.

Separately, there were people who liked flowers but weren't that serious about it; they would buy flowers in pots at plant markets and enjoy them casually. I think the increase in the production of flowerpots was also a major factor.

It seems they also got particular about the pots and compared them.

Potted plants were available for every season—for example, Adonis amurensis (fukujuso) for the New Year, or Primula sieboldii (sakuraso) in the spring. People didn't just go to buy them; plant sellers carrying shoulder poles walked through the town, making it very easy to buy them. Obtaining flowers and plants felt like an everyday leisure activity, and actually growing them became established as a pleasure.

You mentioned that growing rare species became popular, and hearing that reminded me of the famous Tulip Mania in the early 17th-century Netherlands.

It's said that during the Dutch Tulip Mania, everyone from the wealthy to washerwomen bought bulbs, and people bought tulips like crazy. It's often cited as the basis for financial instrument trading.

I don't think there was such a massive social shift in Japan, but there were indeed transactions at high prices, and it seems the Shogunate occasionally banned them.

On the other hand, those rare morning glories were simultaneously being illustrated and published as printed materials.

And that is exactly where they are depicted in ukiyo-e.

Yes. At the time, the technology for woodblock ukiyo-e was very advanced, so they recorded those rare plants and left them as printed publications. I think it was influential in the sense that it affected not only horticulture but also the fields of painting and art.

For example, Maruyama Okyo has famous paintings that look like very precise observations of plants.

During the period of the Dutch Tulip Mania, they were doing similar things; there are precise drawings of insects in addition to tulips, so it feels similar. I get the sense that it wasn't just about admiring flowers, but also had an aspect of scientific inquiry.

Regarding "depicted flowers," the history of Japanese painting has always had "flower-and-bird paintings" (kacho-ga) as a major theme. Not just flowers, but trees like pines and plums, or birds flying there, have been depicted since ancient times, and they remained a major theme for painters in the Edo period. Within that flow, daimyo in particular showed great interest in what we might call natural history or botany.

Natural history, or "honzo-gaku," first involved identifying what kind of plants existed in various parts of Japan and what their names were—discerning whether they were the same species even if they had different regional names.

Starting in the 18th century, it became popular among daimyo to scientifically investigate various things, not just flowers. In that context, they often had painters create lifelike records of plants, birds, and fish for illustrated encyclopedias.

There is also a theory that paintings created in Japan influenced English gardens. Until the 17th century, formal gardens influenced by the Renaissance were mainstream in England, but they became more Oriental in style under Japanese influence.

That's right. While exploring research themes, I found an interesting story. An Englishman named Sir William Temple, who was the ambassador in The Hague in the late 17th century, heard stories from people returning from the East with the Dutch East India Company. He wrote an essay saying, "Gardens in the East are irregular and imperfect. There seems to be a way of thinking different from the symmetrical formal gardens of Europe, and they call it beautiful. Apparently, they call such a thing 'sharawadgi'." This story influenced English gardens, which came to be called "sharawadgi-style gardens."

Sir William Temple was the patron of Jonathan Swift, who wrote "Gulliver's Travels." Generally, "sharawadgi" is said to be Chinese, but at that time, Qing Dynasty China was still under maritime prohibition (sakoku), and Japan was the only one trading with the Dutch East India Company. Therefore, the "gardens in the East" mentioned here might actually refer to Japan.

I think Japan may have influenced the English in creating landscape-style gardens that mimic nature, which are different from the continental symmetrical gardens.

So it influenced the English landscape garden. What is generally called an "English garden" today usually refers to the horticultural method of the "cottage garden" proposed by Gertrude Jekyll and others in a later era as an antithesis to the landscape garden.

Landscape gardens were based on the concept of the picturesque, creating the original scenery of England by grading hills and such. Rather than admiring plants, it was about creating a landscape like a civil engineering project. Capability Brown, a designer of landscape gardens, built gardens on a scale that could move an entire village.

In contrast, Jekyll proposed a garden style that utilized natural planting and native species. This became widely popular among the bourgeoisie from the 19th to the 20th century.

The background of the landscape garden was that during the Baroque era, people like Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain in France began painting landscapes. An idea of Arcadia as a paradise appeared there. It became popular to paint landscapes not as they truly were, but as utopias, and to depict beautiful goddesses within them. That became the foundation.

William Kent, who developed the landscape garden, was originally a painter with no experience in landscaping.

So there was an antithesis to that landscape garden, like saying, "A real garden should be different," right?

Yes. It is said that there are about 3,000 species of plants native to Japan alone, whereas England has only about 200 species. This conversely led to a longing for plants, and combined with imperialism, plant hunters collected plants from various countries around the world and increased the number of species through hybridization.

Initially, admiring plants in England was also a hobby for royalty and the aristocracy. Most landscape gardens were private estates of the nobility, but the reason it spread to the middle classes like the bourgeoisie was because the cottage garden style—enjoying native species planted in a natural way—was proposed. I think that led to the "English garden" that Japanese people came to admire as gardening.

You mentioned "honzo-gaku" earlier. In medieval Europe, ethical values were extremely strong, and for a long time, it was considered "no time to be admiring flowers and plants," so there had to be a purpose for growing them. That's why herb gardens were created in places like monasteries.

In London, the guild of herbalism—essentially a doctor's herb garden—still remains today in the form of the Chelsea Physic Garden. It's like the Koishikawa Botanical Garden in Japan. I think gardens where plants were grown for a purpose gradually began to have attention paid to their beauty itself.

Perhaps the European perception of plants or gardens is fundamentally rooted in the idea that humans dominate nature. The gardens of the Palace of Versailles are geometrically symmetrical, and even the English landscape gardens mentioned earlier involve control in the sense of creating that scenery themselves.

They are created very artificially, aren't they?

Yes. On the other hand, Japanese gardens naturally involve an awareness of modifying nature. However, while they are modified, it's not about humans dominating nature, but rather a tool for placing humans within nature. For example, even in a dry landscape garden, the viewer perceives great nature—be it mountains, the sea, or the universe—within their mind.

Regarding plants, the "honzo-gaku" I mentioned earlier certainly had the purpose of medicine, but looking at the illustrated books made by daimyo, it feels like they purely liked flowers and wanted to record them, or liked fish and wanted to paint them. It feels more like a world of personal interest than practicality.

In England, too, there were very hobby-like aspects in the 19th century. But as Ms. Seki said, because there are very few species, there was a strong movement to collect rare species from Africa, India, etc., and crossbreed them to create new species themselves. It feels different from the Edo-period interest in and admiration of nature.

Also, London has many large parks, such as Hyde Park. Hyde Park was originally a hunting ground for Henry VIII, but it seems it was opened to the public and became a park in the 17th century. Although it's called a park, Hyde Park is like a collection of small gardens.

The eight Royal Parks in London were originally royal estates opened to the citizens. London has a very high percentage of green space among the world's five major cities, and there are many green spaces that were private land but are now open to the public or shared as common spaces.

In a broader sense that includes pastures and cultivated land, there is something called a "public footpath." Footpaths (small paths for people to walk) through vast farmland are open to the public as thoroughfares. It can be said to be a system where, even though it is private land, the scenery can be shared by passing through it.

Also, in the Fairhazel Gardens block in North London where I lived for a while, about 50 buildings surrounded one vast garden. That garden was a community garden, and by sharing it, people of various races, classes, and ages could build a community and have a common awareness while growing and managing plants. I thought this was a very fair and interesting system.

As Japan undergoes urban reorganization toward becoming a compact city, I think vacant lots will continue to increase. How to share that land will likely become a major challenge in the future.

That may be true.

This is just my impression after living in Japan for a year since returning, but I feel that flowers are more accessible in Europe. There is a culture of casually giving flowers as gifts or arranging modest flowers on the dining table every day. I feel that flowers are close at hand on a common, everyday level. It might be a matter of spiritual richness or peace of mind. In Japan's case, newly built houses have exteriors hardened with concrete, and there doesn't even seem to be space to plant a tree. I wonder how the horticultural culture that developed in Edo continues today.

I think plant markets and festivals, like the Iriya Morning Glory Market, remain in some parts as horticultural culture continuing from Edo, but the practice of having a gardener come to one's own garden to maintain it is rapidly dying out.

In my parents' neighborhood, there was a house with a magnificent garden, but recently the person who had that garden built went into the hospital due to old age, and the son cleared the entire garden, turned half into a parking lot, and built his own house on the other half.

On the other hand, the culture of buying and lining up potted plants seems to remain in the downtown areas (shitamachi) on the east side of Tokyo, such as Koto Ward and Sumida Ward across the Sumida River. You can see scenes where potted plants are lined up all around the entrance, making it unclear where the house's property ends.

The flowerpots placed in front of the tenement houses in the Edo period were something everyone passing by could share—in a sense, they were very democratic.

Just before I went to the UK, about 20 years ago, English gardens became popular in Japan. I think the longing for roses was particularly strong, but because Japan has a humid climate, they were susceptible to pests, making it difficult to grow roses. So it changed into a slightly different form.

In the UK after that, a movement called the "Modern British Movement" occurred. It's a garden style called the "Dutch Wave," which mainly uses perennial plants of native species suited to the ecological environment; it's a low-maintenance garden that doesn't require annual cutting or transplanting. In contrast to the drift planting of cottage gardens, a style called "mass planting," which looks like a natural meadow at first glance, is now becoming mainstream.

If we follow this concept, we can create an "English garden" using Japan's original species without using British plants. This is a landscaping method suited to Japan's ecosystem and seems like a natural approach.

Earlier, there was talk about European gardens controlling nature more, but in a sense, Japanese gardens also seem to have very strong designer intent.

For example, there are stepping stones. Even with a single stepping stone, the designer controls everything—how people walk and where they are shown the garden. Trees are also intentionally pruned to create shapes.

Existing Japanese gardens condense the characteristics of Japanese space. And the way of thinking about space seems as different from Western ones as this world is from the next.

The way of taking "ma" (space/interval) is different, isn't it? It's like leaving things out.

That's right. In Japanese gardens, "ma" is the protagonist, and plants are the supporting cast. Creating "ma" might mean creating an atmosphere or a sense of air. Plants are supporting actors, and it could just as well be stones; essentially, the balance between elements is important, and the relationship, tension, and harmony between objects are expressed in the "ma." In contrast, in Western gardens, elements like plants themselves are the protagonists.

For example, even in ceramics or lacquerware, Japanese works have a lot of "ma" or space, but in works produced for overseas, they intentionally filled in the spaces because that's what foreigners liked.

This is something I experienced when creating a garden in London, but when you ask British people to do the construction, they want to fill every "ma" (space/interval) (laughs). It seems they feel restless if there is a gap. I thought, this is a difference in the sense of space.

This concept of "ma" exists across all genres as a Japanese sense of discernment. However, it's not that we are consciously following a rule like "leave exactly this much space"; it's something quite intuitive.

Otherwise, conversely, Japanese people would feel restless.

Even among contemporary artists and craftspeople active overseas, many are completely unaware that they are creating something "Japanese." It is only when they are told, "This is very Japanese," that they realize, "Oh, that's how my way of taking and creating space is perceived."

I had that experience too. At first, when I entered a school to study English gardens, I thought I was designing an English garden, but I was told it was very Oriental. There are parts where I unconsciously balance things using three points.

I think Japan and China are also very different. When I visit Chinese gardens, I feel that China very much wants to fill spaces, likes symmetry, and prefers even numbers. Even within the East, I feel the uniqueness of Japan once again. It's interesting to think about how Japanese people took the culture that came from China and made it uniquely Japanese.

That applies to every genre. Ink wash painting is the most typical example. Just as Europeans created Japanese-style things in an imaginary world without seeing Japan, very few Japanese people actually traveled to China. They looked only at what was transmitted from China and imagined it by imitating it superficially.

Japanese people, who had never seen the massive rock-like mountains or great rivers found in China, would look at paintings and superficially mimic a world that couldn't exist in Japan. As a result, they didn't grasp the concept of space at all.

In terms of the concept of space, China is probably closer to the West.

Exactly.

There seems to be a core to Japanese culture—a power to transform any foreign culture brought in, or perhaps something universal that doesn't change. I wonder what that is.

In a word, it's probably that we can't throw away the past. In the case of Europe or China, being continental, when they were attacked or ruled, they could flee to another piece of land connected by ground. However, in Japan's case, it is the final destination for those who have fled, so there is nowhere else to go. I think Japanese history is about "people who fled here having no choice but to get along and do well together."

When Buddhism entered a place that originally had nature worship like Shinto, if it were the continent, a cultural shift would occur. But because they couldn't move, they had to become one. Through the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism, they integrated gods and Buddhas. Or even with Chinese Zen culture, they fused it with traditional Japanese culture and performed their own unique modifications. You could call it a Galapagos effect, but that's how it has been for a long time.

That's true. Also, while Japan is not a chair culture, China is. When I think about why chairs didn't become popular in Japan, I suspect it's because they were an agricultural people. Nature is abundant; if you go to a river, you can catch fish. It rains a lot, and plants grow. I think this environment manifests in their line of sight in various ways.

The line of sight is different when sitting on the floor versus sitting in a chair, and I think this also affects how gardens are built. When you open the shoji (sliding paper doors), you see the garden beyond the nure-en (open veranda). That is probably a world that doesn't exist in a chair culture. I believe such things helped create Japan's unique gardens and landscapes.

That may certainly be true.

Japanese gardens in temples and shrines are certainly a reflection of Buddhist thought, but I looked through various literature to consider what formed cultural differences prior to religion, and I found the concept of the "Cosmic Axis" in spatial theory.

There is the idea of "Forest Culture vs. Desert Culture." Japan is a forest culture, while the West is a desert culture. In the desert, to confirm direction, they first discovered the North Star. Since the North Star is a fixed point in the universe, they defined the line connecting the North Star and the Earth's axis as the Cosmic Axis, from which a fixed worldview was born. In contrast, Japan has a fluid worldview with the east-west axis of the sun's orbit as the Cosmic Axis, which gave rise to animism and polytheistic thinking.

In the West, monotheism was born from this, and in painting, a fixed worldview like linear perspective emerged. In Japan's case, as seen in the "Scenes in and around Kyoto" (Rakuchu Rakugai-zu) screens, the painter moves their viewpoint while drawing. In gardens, forms like the stroll garden (kaiyu-shiki teien) were born.

The idea that life circulates and is reborn—reincarnation or cyclical thought—likely originates from India, but I think it dominates the Japanese concept of space. On the other hand, the West seems to have a worship of straight lines, where time is also perceived as linear.

Linear perspective is exactly the world seen from the eyes of the human drawing it; the individual human consciousness is very strong. On the other hand, traditional Japanese painting methods do not capture the world from a human eye level, but from another perspective looking down on humans from a bird's-eye view.

In "Scenes in and around Kyoto," there is a consciousness of capturing the entire state of the town flatly, so the awareness of the world they are seeing and of nature is likely quite different.

Is that also expressed in Ukiyo-e?

In a broad sense, it certainly is. It's difficult to draw realistically exactly as seen by the human eye. There are cases where Ukiyo-e incorporated Western painting techniques, but it remained a superficial understanding; without understanding it as a theory, they just settled on what worked as a picture.

Japanese gardens have a very high level of abstraction; they are a reflection of thought or art. In contrast, English gardens are gardens meant to be used, and function is always conscious.

When I studied English gardens, I was taught something called a bubble diagram, which involves filling the entire space with functions. In contrast, Japan has "ma"—spaces with no function at all.

The obsession with function might be linked to desert culture. Essentially, you can't get water without irrigation. That's why Westerners are so obsessed with fountains—the Hanging Gardens of Babylon had fountains, and the gardens of Tivoli have fountains.

Originally, humans grew plants to eat, and over a long time, the aspect of "gardens for appreciation" emerged. I think the functional part is a manifestation of those dire environmental differences. Japan is, after all, a country rich in nature.

That's true. Regarding the function of gardens, something interesting is the Edo-period playwright Takizawa Bakin. According to his diary, he did quite a bit of gardening, though only on the scale of a typical house garden.

One element at the time was Kaso-gaku (the study of house physiognomy). It's like modern-day Feng Shui; if a family member got sick, they would fill in a pond because the water was "bad," or they were told not to plant certain trees in certain locations or directions. While you could call that a function, it's a sensation closer to faith or superstition.

I think the fact that gardening is popular again now, even amidst talk of a declining birthrate, is a manifestation of a desire to nurture something.

I think the British word "gardening" carries a strong sense of morality. This might be linked to Christianity, but essentially it's the idea that "people who grow plants are good people. They are virtuous, the salt of the earth."

For example, this appears in literature. In "The Lord of the Rings," the protagonist is Frodo, but the one who helped the faltering Frodo until the end was a gardener. The final scene is him returning to his own garden and saying, "Well, I'm back." I saw in that the ethics of the British and their relationship with gardens.

I see.

I think it's precisely because growing plants is difficult in a place like Britain that an ethical sense becomes necessary.

The common people of Edo didn't have that kind of ethics; in a sense, they grew flowers innocently. I feel this is because Japan is rich in nature and has many varieties of wildflowers.

Returning to Japan last year, I strongly felt the vigor of plant growth. Apparently, only 30% of the inhabited areas on Earth are regions that would return to forest if left alone, and Japan is one of them. I was enjoying the fury of nature by leaving my home garden neglected (laughs).

Certainly, in Japan, even in the Edo period, there's a sense that people bought potted plants as if they were just buying everyday sundries. It must be different from the difficulty of growing things in Britain.

The Netherlands still actively exports flowers, but the winters are very cold. That's why the longing for spring to come and flowers to bloom is even more desperate than for the Japanese. I think that's why flowers developed as a major export industry. Despite having so many varieties, I feel Japan doesn't have that level of emotional investment.

In terms of what is available on the market as horticultural varieties, the British market is richer. Garden centers have an abundance of plants, and ordinary people can even buy trees. Horticulture and landscaping have become dynamic industries. While Japan has many native species, I think the horticultural market hasn't developed as much.

One type of garden currently popular in Britain is the "edible garden." There are also gardens linked to food, like vegetable gardens.

Also, since the war, Britain has had a custom of "allotment gardens" (community gardens), where people cultivate fields surrounded by housing to grow vegetables, and communities are born there. In a multinational society, they function as places for people to interact.

With the revision of the Immigration Control Act, the number of foreigners in Japan will increase, and the aging society will progress. This is the wisdom of multinational London: connecting people through allotment gardens and community gardens. I think it's a wonderful thing to have spaces where various people can interact in a fair way while engaging with plants.

Real estate is extremely expensive in Hong Kong, but last year, a vegetable garden was built on the roof of a large building that combines a fashion mall and office space. Employees working in the building can cultivate part of it and grow things like carrots.

Everyone lives in small homes, so they can't have their own gardens. But by going to work and, for example, a boss and subordinate growing plants together, they can communicate. This has become a way to strengthen the building's brand. It would be great if Japan could do something like that.

I think roof gardens are the only remaining frontier in Tokyo. I've worked on several roof gardens, and since technology like lightweight soil has advanced considerably, I think the possibilities for roof gardens will continue to expand.

In the large buildings and department stores being built now, even if they aren't full gardens, there's an increasing number of places on the upper floors where some plants are being grown. I believe GINZA SIX and Tokyo Midtown Hibiya were like that.

Also, things like edible gardens have recently been appearing next to restaurants in Japan. In that sense, we may be in an era seeking new ways to engage with plants, including learning about what we eat.