The gardens at Matsuo Taisha Shrine, Kyoto, are designer Mirei Shigemori’s last works and, according to some, his final masterpieces. He designed three gardens here, two of which can be considered stone gardens.
The first, known as the Kyokusui no Niwa (Garden of the Undulating Stream), is adjacent to a concrete treasure house and ceremonial building constructed in 1973. A river flows from Mount Matsuo into the garden, forming a shallow, winding stream. Entering the garden from the south west and exiting in the north, the stream’s banks are lined with flat, blue stones, while the bottom of the channel is covered in gravel. In the back ground, an assortment of large and smaller rocks stand in the midst of an undulating mound of azaleas. Clipped into the shape of a turtle, they also mirror the outline of Mount Matsuo to the rear of the shrine. The east section of the garden is paved and can be walked on. In declining health at the time of the garden’s construction, it took Shigemori a full year to complete. The final part of the work was executed by his eldest son, Kanto, after Shigemori passed away, on 12 March 1975.
Placed on a steep slope beside the treasure house, the Joko no Niwa (Garden of Ancient Times), is a dynamic stone arrangement on a steep slope. In positioning a garden within the grounds of a shrine, Shigemori brought the Japanese garden full circle, creating an iwakura, a place for the Shinto gods to congregate. Shigemori believed that the sacred kura rocks, worshipped as deities in ancient times, were the origin of the Japanese garden. All of the rocks were transported from Shikoku Island and are the variety known as ao-ishi (blue chlorite schist). The garden creates an ascending drama, with smaller stones supplanted by larger ones going up the hill until, at the top, the rocks weigh between five and eight tons. Close to his own death, Shigemori reached out to the divine in the creation of this garden, stating that “To set stones for an iwakura, the garden designer must acquire an identical mentality to the gods…. What this is about is how close a garden maker can get to the gods, and how pure his mind can become.”
The Garden of the Undulating Stream takes its name from an ancient Japanese ceremony called Doll Floating, in which dolls were sent down rivers on miniature boats, carrying off bad luck with them.
The Horai Garden was designed by Mirei Shigemori but completed by his eldest son, Kanto.
are rarely found at shrines. Adding to the uniqueness of this contemporary garden is the use of water, tile and cement.
The trademark wave designs Shigemori enjoyed using for paving stones.
In the Garden of Ancient Times, Shigemori returned to the origins of the Japanese garden by creating an iwakura, a place for the gods to visit.