Japanese gardens have taught me to slow down. In their spaces of calm, I’m more reflective, intuitive and focused. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, there are subtle but intentional elements in a Japanese garden that require the walker to slacken their pace, reflect and appreciate the details.
Combined with the Japanese aesthetic called wabi-sabi, these elements have an air of being unfinished, wonky or worn down by time and the elements, which again is quite intentional. Wabi-sabi at its heart accepts life as transient and imperfect.
Kiyosumi Gardens
In Japan, what I call the “slowing down” garden is referred to as a traditional strolling garden. The strolling garden that I most admire is Kiyosumi Gardens in the old town of Fukagawa on the eastern side of Tokyo. It was constructed during the Meiji Period (1868 to 1912) by the founder of Mitsubishi as a park for its workers. In the 1930s, it was donated to the government and opened to the public.
This garden features a large central lake with hundreds of friendly turtles. In the wild, turtles are quick to submerge if they see a human, but here, several came over to me as I knelt alongside the water. Along with turtles, the lake has koi and other types of fish.
By using subtle elements, visitors are led on a walk around the lake. Everything, including the stones, was specially chosen to be in its position. There are three main islands in the lake, with one being connected by a bridge called the Zigzag Bridge. In this strolling garden, the bridge design made me stop, look at the garden from different angles and simply appreciate my surroundings. It’s the perfect place to watch the koi fish and turtles.
The bridge isn’t complete, in the spirit of wabi-sabi. An old Japanese belief is that evil spirits only travel in a straight line, so after I crossed the Zigzag Bridge, I was safe.
Other pathways were winding and uneven, requiring the walker to slow down and become immersed in the landscape. As I was stepping on the moss and leaves along the stone pathways, the paths beneath my feet changed, shifted direction or became more rustic.
A traditional tea house was located in the Kiyosumi Gardens as well. I ordered a cup of exquisite matcha tea, which I enjoyed along with the view of the garden. I came across a boulder with an inscribed haiku poem by Bashō (my guidebook, thankfully, was in English). Bashō was one of Japan’s most famous poets. He spent the last years of his life in Fukagawa, not far from the garden.
A merging of the self with nature
As I entered the garden, I took a break from everyday life and began exploring a multi-dimensional landscape of possibilities. It was as though I was given new eyes with which to see the world. An old Zen teaching posits that we start to “see with our ears and listen with our eyes.”
The best gardens need to be experienced more than once, as each never repeats what it was.
Being in that garden for an extended period, I noticed the nuanced green palette of the plants more vividly. The dappled patterns of sunlight for which the Japanese ascribe the poetic word komorebi created a chiaroscuro-like dark brightness.
Light, seasons, darkness, flowering, growth, fog, rain, snow, chance and decay constantly recreate the garden, so the best gardens need to be experienced more than once, as each never repeats what it was. This garden made me recognize that nature never makes an aesthetic mistake: the grain of tree trunks and the texture of rocks are masterworks of arbitrary design.
As I strolled through Kiyosumi, I stopped often to simply gaze at the water and close my eyes. The sound of water soothed and relaxed me.
What we see and take from the garden depends on ourselves, on our willingness to enter a space beyond beauty; our surrender allows us to see with our heart. The silence of the garden only serves to heighten each and every sound. Over time, we’ll be lifted out of the mundane into a heightened reality. One is not only in the garden but now also a part of it, a visitor no more.
A merging of the self with nature—that is the slowing down garden.
"СВЯЗАННОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ" THE MARVELS OF MOSS: The epitome of Japanese wabi-sabi»
изображение: TANAKA Juuyoh (Cropped from original)
