Tōtekiko (東滴壺) is one of the five

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...

s at the Ryōgen-in sub-temple of the

Daitoku-ji is a Buddhist temple, one of fourteen autonomous branches of the Rinzai school of Japanese Zen. It is located in Kita-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The "mountain name" ('' sangō'') by which it is known is . The Daitoku-ji temple complex today covers more ...

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

complex in

Kita-ku, Kyoto is one of the eleven Wards of Kyoto, wards in the Municipalities of Japan, city of Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Its name means "North Ward." As of 2020, the ward has an estimated population of 117,165 people. Hiragino typefa ...

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 ...

. It was laid out by Nabeshima Gakusho in 1958, and is claimed to be the smallest Japanese rock garden.''The Art of the Japanese Garden''
David Young, Michiko Young, Tan Hong Yew, Ben Simmons, Tuttle Publishing, 2005, , p.110 It is a ''

tsubo-niwa A is a type of very small garden in Japan. The term stems from , a unit of measurement (equal to 1×1 , the size of two tatami, roughly ), and , meaning "garden". Other spellings of translate to "container garden", and a may differ in size ...

'', a small enclosed garden, composed of rocks placed on raked sand. Concentric gravel circles around stones placed towards each end of the garden are connected by parallel ridges and furrows. The garden is briefly illuminated by the sun at around noon each day, and it is occasionally covered by snow in the winter. The garden symbolises a

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

saying, that the harder a stone is thrown in, the bigger the ripples. The temple also includes three other ''

karesansui The or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and us ...

'' gardens: Isshi-dan, Koda-tei, and Ryōgin-tei (a moss-covered garden which is claimed to be the oldest garden in Daitoku-ji, and has been attributed to

Sōami was a Japanese painter and landscape artist. Sōami was the grandson and son of the painters and art connoisseurs Nōami and Geiami, respectively. He was in the service of the Ashikaga shogunate who is claimed to have designed the rock garden of ...

References

External links

Photographs
Gardens in Kyoto Prefecture {{Japan-garden-stub