is a Japanese garden located in Nara, the old capital of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

near Kyōto. It has been preserved since its creation in the

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

, and is the only walking garden (''kaiyushiki teien'') in Nara. It is divided into two sections, which were originally two separate gardens, and each features a pagoda.

History

The site of the western garden originally formed part of Manishu-in, a minor temple which was part of the larger temple of Kofuku-ji. The ground was bought in the 1670, during the Enpō era by Kiyosumi Michikiyo, a wealthy tanner. He restructured the gardens between 1673 and 1681 and built two houses: the Sanshu-tei and Tei-shu-Ken, as the family home. These were built with thatched roofs. The name Sanshu-tei ("house of the three wonders") was given by Mokuan, the large priest of the Manpuku-ji temple of the school Zen Oubaku with Uji. The larger eastern garden dates from 1899 and was designed by Seki Tojiro, a Nara businessman. Tojiro hired for the redesign Horitoku, a garden architect from the school of Urasenke. In 1939, the two gardens were bought and combined by Jyunsaku Nakamura, a merchant of Nara, to provide a site for the attached

Neiraku Museum is an art museum in the city of Nara, central Japan. The museum opened in April 1969. It contains the works collected by Nakamura Junsaku (1875-1953), who was the founder of the Isuien Garden. The collection totals over 2000 items, which includes ...

(), which hosts a collection of traditional Japanese ceramics.

Layout

The gardens cover roughly . In the central pond of the gardens, there are two islands with sculptures of a crane and tortoise. In Japanese culture these animals represent longevity. The house of the Hyoshin-tei, along with the west pool, were designed by Kimura Seibei, another garden architect from Urasenke. It allows access of the house by using a technique called ''

shakkei Borrowed scenery (; Japanese: ; Chinese: ) is the principle of "incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden" found in traditional East Asian garden design. The term borrowing of scenery ("shakkei") is Chinese in origin, an ...

'', or "borrowed landscape." The composition of the landscape incorporates the roof of the large southern door (Nandaimon) of the temple Tōdai-ji, as well as the three higher hills overhanging Nara: the mounts Wakakusa, Kasuga, and Mikasa. It is framed by the trees of the Himuro sanctuary in the south, and the Tōdai-ji temple in the north. These make the space between the garden and background seem to disappear, producing a continuity which makes the landscape blend in visual harmony. This harmony is reinforced by the absence of any artificial enclosure. The shape of the pond represents the shape of the kanji 水 character for ''mizu'' (“water”). A central island is connected to the bank by a series of stepping stones, which were formerly used to grind the pigments used in dyeing. The garden also contains decorative stones, which were popular during the

. The water is fed by the Yosiki river, which flows adjacent to the garden.

References

Bibliography

External links

Homepage of Isuien

Isuien Garden, from The Official Nara Travel Guide
{{Coord, 34.685646, 135.837674, display=title Gardens in Nara Prefecture Japanese strolling gardens Nara, Nara Places of Scenic Beauty