The Roots of Japanese Gardens
Traditional Chinese gardens are strongly influenced by Confucianism and Taoism. The traditional Chinese house was quite formal, with rooms arranged around square or rectangular courtyards. The garden is usually not viewed from within the house, the house is only connected to the garden by a few doors. It has often been said that the traditional Chinese house represents Confucianism while the irregular gardens represents Taoism. The house and it's garden were designed to contrast with each other, and to provide the spiritual balance that the counter-balancing influences of Confucianism and Taoism gave to Chinese society.
The Japanese didn't reject Confucianism and Taoism, but Japanese gardens are more strongly Buddhist than most Chinese gardens. The native Shinto religion believes that the world is filled with spirits, these spirits inhabit all of nature, including trees and rocks. When Buddhism reached Japan from Korea in 552, the Japanese readily accepted the Buddhist concept that plants were constituted out of portions of reincarnated souls, combined with fragments of other souls which had reached the same degree of spiritual advancement. The Japanese attitude towards nature has always been more strongly religious than the Chinese, and Japanese gardens tend to reflect this. Japanese gardens are often created to be viewed from within the house, the garden is a sacred space which is lovingly tended, but not really intended to be walked through. Chinese gardens were always intended to be walked through and lived in.
Traditional Chinese gardens were dominated by the art of feng shui, and the Japanese absorbed this art, along with many other ideas from China. When the Tang Dynasty collapsed, there a long break in communications between the mainland and Japan, the Japanese forgot some basic concepts behind feng shui and interpreted the rules in their own unique manner. For example, The Sakutei-ki is the oldest text on gardens, written by Tachibana no Toshitsuna in the 11th Century. In this book Toshitsuna states, correctly, that according to feng shui, to the east there was a blue dragon, to the south, a red phoenix, to the north, a white tiger and to the west, a black tortoise. The ideal location for a house had a stream or river to the east, a pond to the south, a road or highway to the west, and a hill to the north. What he adds has nothing to do with feng shui, it is totally
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