As we see in the history of various arts, periods of great innovation are often followed by periods of basically copying those earlier creations.  Formulae are developed and strictly followed, with the original reasons for developing them sometimes getting forgotten.  So it was with karesansui in Japan. 

During the last century, a revolution of sorts was conducted by Shigemori Mirei, a scholar of arts and Japanese culture who had first published a major study of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) and later turned to gardens.  He produced a massive 26-volume encyclopedia cataloguing Japanese gardens and their history.  After completing the first volume, he began his own career as a landscape designer.  Mirei felt that since about the middle of the Edo Era, garden designers had stopped innovating and were merely copying their predecessors.  He thus took it upon himself to modernize garden design.  He is quoted in Christian Tschumi’s excellent book, “Mirei Shigemori : Modernizing the Japanese garden,” as follows:

“Historically speaking, Japan’s past was very good, but Japan’s present largely comes up empty.  In 100 years, in 1000 years, they will be wondering what people in the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa Periods were up to.  That’s how dull these times are!  That’s why I thought I had to at least leave something good behind, so I switched to being a maker of things.  Whether I was good or not will be judged by the future, I guess.”

His very first major commission, the gardens at Tofuku-ji (a Zen temple of the Rinzai school) in Kyoto’s Higashiyama area, is probably sufficient to answer his question about how the future would judge him.  Though revolutionary and controversial at the time, elements of these gardens now look to me both new and ancient, modern and traditional.  Perhaps most famous is the gradient checkerboard pattern of moss and paving stones in the north garden, which now looks so “right” but probably shocked some at the time.  While the use of paving stones in a garden was an innovation, Tschumi’s book reveals that this was the result of the temple priest’s request to re-use materials in line with the precepts of Rinzai Zen.  A good example of how imposing constraints can lead to creative solutions. 

In general, Shigemori Mirei’s designs are highly dynamic, featuring strong lines including curves and waves, and large stones that are more often vertically oriented than what we see in more traditional gardens.  This gives them the impression of being grounded while simultaneously reaching upward toward the sky. 

Several gardens by Shigemori can be found in Kyoto.  I have visited most of the accessible ones, some multiple times.  One I hadn’t yet been able to enjoy until the latest trip, though, is the one he built at the home where he lived from the early 1940s until his death in 1975.  This home (in a slightly out-of-the-way part of Kyoto) is now operated as the Mirei Shigemori Garden Museum, and can be visited by appointment only.  Upon finally seeing it, I was fascinated by the thought of it representing what he freely designed for his own home, without the constraints of other locations where, even though he had wide creative freedom, there was still a “customer”.  Not surprisingly, here we see plenty of the vertically thrusting stones which have sometimes been criticized as excessive in his work.  The garden itself was completed around 1953, along with an adjacent teahouse.  But Mirei continued to tinker with the stones until reaching the “final” version in 1970.  It is said that this is the only garden in which he ever made changes to his original stone placements.  It’s also the only one in which he planted cherry blossom trees, giving in to the wishes of his wife (Ref:  “Shigemori Mirei, Creator of Spiritual Spaces”, Kyoto Tsushinsha Press).