Sansui- Mountains and Water in Japanese Gardens
At our talk in April in New York, among a variety of questions we were happy to receive, there was an interesting one that could be called a linguestic question: “What does sansui (山水) mean? Does it mean nature or a garden?” In Japanese, san (山) means a mountain and sui (水) means water. Combined, […]
PED Discussed “Water in Japanese Gardens” at Nichibei Exchange
Takaya Kurimoto of PED presented a lecture on “Water in Japanese Gardens” at Nichibei Exchange in New York on April 28. Water is one of the most important elements in Japanese gardens. Even Japanese dry gardens have imaginary water. Takaya introduced some examples to illustrate the meaning and design of water in Japanese gardens. What […]
Beauty of Not Showing All in Japanese Architecture
Is this, seen on this picture of Machiya townhouse in Kyoto, an opening or a wall? Japanese architecture have neither, not in a clearly defined way in Western architecture. An element that looks like a wall is thin and can slide open. Other things that look like openings are just perforated walls. The architecture’s post-and-beam structure and Japan’s […]
Patterns in Japanese Architecture – Roof Tile
Repetition is not boring. It expands our imagination. This picture tells us so. When you see patterns in Japanese arts and architecture, forms of repeated element are often taken from organic figures such as a branch, a leaf, or a wave. Each element is simple and clean. When by itself, it is quiet and does not convey much. Yet when it is repeated in […]
Cat’s Eye View of Japanese Architecture Vol.2 – Crawling
At the beginning of “I AM A CAT” by Soseki Natsume, an abandoned cat crawled through a gap in a bumboo fence looking for some food. It found itself in a yard of someone’s home and said “How strangely the wheel of fortune turns! Had it not been this gap, I might have starved to […]
