Tofuku-ji, the head temple of the Rinzai School of Zen, was founded in the Kamakura period (1185–1333), at a time when Zen Buddhism was beginning to flourish. Mirei Shigemori was asked to create the Abbot’s Hall garden in 1938. As the temple was in debt at the time, he offered to do the work free of charge on condition that he had a completely free hand in its design.
The work that Shigemori created was called Hasso no Niwa (Garden of Eight Phases), a reference to the eight stages in the life of the Buddha. The south side of the Abbot’s Hall garden is designed in the Zen tradition, with a seemingly infinite expanse of gravel representing the sea. The stone setting in the eastern corner of the garden symbolizes the Chinese mythological Islands of the Immortals, while the moss-covered mounds to the west represent the five main temples of Rinzai Zen Buddhism.
Paving stones were used in the northern garden to create a startling checkerboard pattern of stone and moss. Based on a traditional design called ichimatsu, square stones formerly used as part of an entrance path are juxtaposed with cedar moss to create a vision of flat rice fields. The effect on the viewer of this moss and stone matrix is very contemporary, drawing comparisons with the work of the European abstract painter Piet Mondrian. In creating the eastern Garden of the Big Dipper, the first garden in Japan representing the constellations, Shigemori reused seven cylindrical foundation stones taken from the temple’s latrine building. The northern and eastern gardens are good examples of mitate-mono, the use of old objects as garden elements.
The verdant and watered hillside garden at Kaisan-do (Founder’s Hall), a sub-temple of Tofuku-ji, sits opposite a rectangular plane of sand.
Moss-covered hills in the corner of the Abbot’s Hall southern garden represent Kyoto’s five principal Rinzai Zen temples.
Stone elements of the pond and hillside Kaisan-do garden, built in the early 1600s.
The older garden at Fumon-in, a nearby sub-temple of the Tofuku-ji complex, has a meticulously maintained sand plain, raked into a checkerboard pattern that may have influenced Shigemori’s thoughts when he came to designing parts of the Abbot’s Hall garden. A mass of rocks, moss and shrubs, forming the shape of a crane and tortoise, are banked up in one corner of the plain. The opposite side of a dividing path consists of stone bridges over a pond, carefully clipped topiary, rocks and stone basins in a composition that provides a verdant contrast to the dry landscape western portion of the garden.
The grid of flat stones and moss in the northern section of the Abbot's Hall garden is based on a traditional design known as ichimatsu. The paving stones were taken from an old entrance path.
An immaculate checkerboard pattern of sand dominates one half of the Kaisan-do garden.
Like many stone gardens, Tofuku-ji depends for its design effect on a strict enclosure of space.
An energetic tension is created between the densely compressed shrubs, rocks and moss that comprise the eastern portion of the Kaisan-do garden and its plain sand matrix.
This arrangement, representing the Big Dipper constellation, is composed of foundation stones taken from a former outhouse.
One of four rock settings in the southern section of the main Abbot's Hall garden, depicting the Islands of the Immortals.
Tight concentrations of tile, stone and gravel are common in karesansui.