Origins of Japanese gardens

From the earliest times, Japanese have regarded places surrounded by natural rocks as dwelling places of the gods. So, too, with dense clusters of trees; and water has traditionally encircled sacred ground. It is in these ancient Shinto beliefs that the creative origin of Japanese gardening lies.

When Buddhism entered Japan in the 6th century, it brought new intellectual conventions that also found their way into garden design. The earliest of these was the use of gardens to represent the Buddhist vision of paradise. Then, from about the 14th century, Zen Buddhist doctrine gave rise to one of the most important concepts of Japanese gardening - the symbolic expression of a whole universe in a limited space. Various ingenious devices were used to achieve such effects - raked sand or gravel to represent a river or the ocean, rocks to represent islands or mountains, and miniature trees to represent a whole forest. Gardens acquired an almost pictorial delicacy of composition that could endure long and studied observation - a very different concept from western gardening, which often seeks to delight with a profusion of colours.

Japanese gardens first appeared on the island of Honshu, the large central island of Japan. In their physical appearance they were influenced by the distinct characteristics of the Honshu landscape; rugged volcanic peaks, narrow valleys and mountain streams with waterfalls and cascades, lakes, and beaches of small stones. They were also influenced by the rich variety of flowers and different species of trees, particularly evergreen trees, on the islands, and by the four distinct seasons in Japan, including hot, wet summers and snowy winters.

Japanese gardens have their roots in Japanese religion of Shinto, with its story of the creation of eight perfect islands, and of the shinchi, the lakes of the gods. Prehistoric Shinto shrines to thekami, the gods and spirits, are found on beaches and in forests all over the island. Sometimes they took the form of of unusual rocks or trees, which were marked with cords of rice fiber,
and surrounded with white stones or pebbles, a symbol of purity. The white gravel
courtyard became a distinctive feature of Shinto shrines, Imperial Palaces, Buddhist temples, and zen gardens.

Ise Jingu, a Shinto shrine begun in the 7th century, surrounded by white gravel

The earliest recorded Japanese gardens were the pleasure gardens of the Japanese Emperors and nobles.