![Beautiful Scene of the Square Pot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Beautiful_Scene_of_the_Square_Pot.jpg)
Sharawadgi or sharawaggi is a style of
landscape gardening
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...
or architecture in which rigid lines and symmetry are avoided to give the scene an organic, naturalistic appearance. This was supposedly a concept in the
Chinese garden
The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate ...
, and starting with
Sir William Temple
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 162827 January 1699) was an English diplomat, statesman and essayist. An important diplomat, he was recalled in 1679, and for a brief period was a leading advisor to Charles II, with whom he then fell ...
's essay ''Upon the gardens of Epicurus'', may have been influential in
English landscape garden
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
ing in the 18th century (Temple had in fact never visited China). The reports from
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
of the Jesuit missionary,
Father Attiret added to this. Sir William Temple first used the word "sharawadgi" in discussing the Chinese idea of beauty without order in garden design, in contrast to the straight lines, regularity, and symmetries then popular in the formal Baroque gardens of Europe, led by the
French formal garden
The French formal garden, also called the (), is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the ...
.
The style indicates a certain irregularity in the design.
The term seems in fact to derive from a version of a Japanese word, though much scholarly effort has been devoted to trying to find a Chinese origin for it. Irregular, non-geometric, planning is a strong feature of the design of many types of Chinese and indeed
Japanese garden
are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...
s, though less so in others, such as grand imperial palace gardens.
Sharawadgi was defined in the 1980s as an "artful irregularity in garden design and, more recently, in town planning". The word inspired the coinage of the term "
sharawadji effect
The sharawadji effect is a musical perception or phenomenon regarding timbre and texture described by Claude Shryer as "a sensation of plenitude sometimes created by the contemplation of a complex soundscape whose beauty is inexplicable." Sharawa ...
" by composer Claude Schryer, which is used in relation to music and the listening experience.
Etymology
The term sharawaggi (more frequently spelled sharawadgi) typically referred to the principle of planned naturalness of appearance in garden design. It was first used by
Sir William Temple
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 162827 January 1699) was an English diplomat, statesman and essayist. An important diplomat, he was recalled in 1679, and for a brief period was a leading advisor to Charles II, with whom he then fell ...
(1628–1699) in an essay, written in 1685 but published in 1692, "Upon the Gardens of Epicurus".
Temple may have picked up the term from a Dutchman who once lived in the
East Indies
The East Indies (or simply the Indies), is a term used in historical narratives of the Age of Discovery. The Indies refers to various lands in the East or the Eastern hemisphere, particularly the islands and mainlands found in and around t ...
.
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician.
He had Strawb ...
associates the term with irregularity, asymmetry, and freedom from the rigid conventions of classical design; by the time of it was used by Walpole it had become a common term in the lexicon of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory.
However, the original word for sharawadgi has been a matter of debate. Some had attempted to reconstruct a possible Chinese origin of the word, for example, "''sa luo gui qi''" (洒落瑰琦) meaning "quality of being impressive or surprising through careless or unorderly grace",
another proposed ''san luan'' (散亂) or ''shu luo'' (疏落), both meaning "scattered and disorderly", in combination with ''wei zhi'' (位置, position and arrangement) to mean "space tastefully enlivened by disorder". After reviewing the suggestions, however, Susi Lang and
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
concluded that the word cannot be firmly established to be a Chinese term.
Michael Sullivan suggested that it is a corruption of a Persian word, while a number of other scholars proposed a Japanese origin.
E.V. Gatenby and Ciaran Murray thought that it originated from the Japanese term ''sorowaji'' (揃わじ), which means ''asymmetry'', ''irregular''.
However, it is argued that this suggestion relies on possible meaning and similarity in sound only, without any other corroboration.
Garden scholar Wybe Kuitert proposed that it stems from the Japanese term ''shara'aji'' or ''share'aji'' (
洒落味、しゃれ味) that may be used to describe decorative motifs in works of applied art. Although there is no attested usage of ''shara'aji'' in the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
when the term was first borrowed into English, Kuitert argued that both its components ''shara'' and ''aji'' were important aesthetic concepts in the era, and would have been used in tandem by craftsmen of the period. The term ''shara'aji'' would have then traveled together with such exports to customers, the aesthetic elite of Europe and became spelled in English as ''sharawadgi''. In Japan the word has also been used a few times in literary criticism in later periods, and is still in common use in appreciating the aesthetics of motifs in
kimono
The is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased. The kimono ...
dress.
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History
![Kew Gardens Pagoda](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Kew_Gardens_Pagoda.jpg)
Merchants from the
Dutch East India Company
The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...
may have brought the term to Europe at the end of the seventeenth century together with
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
Japanese lacquer ware such as cabinets and screens that they imported from Japan. ''Sharawadgi'' as a term in written discourse was introduced in England by
Sir William Temple
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 162827 January 1699) was an English diplomat, statesman and essayist. An important diplomat, he was recalled in 1679, and for a brief period was a leading advisor to Charles II, with whom he then fell ...
in his essay ''Upon the Gardens of Epicurus'', (1685, first printed 1690). Temple had been English ambassador to
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
.
Temple mentioned the concept in a brief passage:
Amongst us, the Beauty of Building and Planting is placed chiefly in some Proportions, Symettries and Uniformities; our Walks and our Trees ranged so, as to answer one another, and at exact Distances. The Chinese scorn this way of Planting ....their greatest reach of Imagination, is employed in contriving Figures, where the Beauty shall be great, and strike the Eye, but without any Order or Disposition of Parts, that shall be commonly or easily discerned. And although we have hardly any Notion of this sort of Beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it... But I should hardly advise any of these Attempts upon the Order of Gardens among us; they are Adventures of too hard Achievement for any common hands ...
He took the exotic, non-symmetric landscapes depicted on such imported artwork as supporting his personal preference for irregular landscape scenery. He may have seen such irregularity in Dutch gardens where a discourse was on about naturalness in landscapes, planned or not. As a result of his introducing the term ''sharawadgi'', Temple is considered to have been among those who introduced the basic ideas that led to the development of the
English landscape garden
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
movement.
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard S ...
took up this discourse (1712), without direct reference to ''sharawadgi'', at which time the original meaning got lost. In England the term reappears with
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
(1724) and
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician.
He had Strawb ...
(1750), to be picked up again by
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
, who brought ''sharawadgi'' to the field of town planning.
Other meanings
;The Sharawadji Effect in music
Inspired by the original idea of more organic, naturally-led garden landscaping, the Sharawadji Effect (spelled with a j rather than a g) has been employed in music, using more natural, ambient soundscapes to create richer, more encompassing, and more realistic "soundscapes". Information on the origins of the Sharawadji Effect in music is not widely accessible, but scholars seem to agree on the definition that sharawadji is "An aesthetic effect that characterizes the feeling of plenitude that is sometimes created by the contemplation of a sound motif or a complex soundscape of inexplicable beauty."
When the Chinese visit a garden that is beautiful because of its organic quality (in other words, its apparent lack of organized design), it is often said that its 'sharawadji' is admirable. In the same fashion, a musical piece employs the Sharawadji Effect if it has a less clean-cut, structural quality and overall a more naturally ambient sound.
;Kimono fashion
In modern Japan, ''share'aji'' is a term used in kimono fashion where it refers to the taste of the design motifs featured in kimono dress, and the coordination of the sash
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with that of the kimono, and to the occasion of wearing them.