Gardens Of Arcane Delight*

5 April 2010
Today, we walked miles – we do of course mean kilometres but that somehow doesn’t sound as good. We started the morning at Konchi-in which has one of Kyoto’s most beautiful dry Crane and Tortoise gardens. It was incredibly peaceful with the sound of tricking water and birdsong.

We then walked alongside a gushing stream to Nanzen-ji, the headquarters of the Rinzani sect of Zen Buddhism. However as today was more about gardens we gave the huge temple only a passing glance and went to its Leaping Tiger garden.
A walk through a hanging bower of cherry blossoms bought us to the ‘Philosophers Path’ a canal side walk, again lined with cherry blossom. The 2km walk is so called because a respected philosopher Nishida Kitaro took his daily constitutional along the path which lies at the foot of the hills. A fairly long detour off the walk and up several flights of stone steps bought us to Honen-In, which according to our guidebook is “one of Kyoto’s hidden pleasures”. It is a lovely, secluded temple with carefully raked rock gardens and some beautiful painted screens within.

Back on the Philosophers Path, which by now was getting busy with the cherry blossom viewers – many of them ladies in kimonos we made our way towards Ginkaku-Ji which is a huge tourist attraction and so we joined the throng climbing the steep hill to the temple. The street was lined with food shops offering free tasters of their wares as well as numerous restaurants. Ignoring these we climbed on until we reached the entrance – a path between 6metre high camellia hedges which seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly at the end a sharp turn bought us into an impressive garden. This is another ‘stroll garden’ designed to give the stroller a new vista at each turn. One very strange feature of the dry garden is a meticulously raked cone of white sand known as ‘kogetsudai’ designed to reflect the moonlight as enhance the beauty of the garden at night. Indeed the whole place was originally designed to be a temple of the night with its main building covered in silver but the benefactor ran out of money before it was finished. The gardens are beautiful with paths climbing up into the wooded hills and back down past waterfalls and lanterns, always simple, in places quite austere but we saw no fewer than seven gardeners on their hands and knees keeping it plain and simple.
Back down the hillside and a bus ride to Kinkaku-Ji, second only to Mount Fuji as Japan’s most famous sight – a temple set beside a reflecting lake with its main hall covered in dazzling gold leaf. It is a stunning vision where Japanese tourists seem to go to have their photograph taken rather than to look at the place and its stunning setting. This belongs to the Shokokuji sect of Buddhism (Catholic, Anglican, Methodist etc suddenly becomes easy to understand).

The temple’s three storey pavilion is crowned with a golden phoenix – sort of apt considering that in 1950 a young monk consummated his obsession with the temple by burning it to the ground! In 1955 a full reconstruction was completed exactly following the original design. Like all of the temples the grounds are beautifully tended and maintained with the inevitable cherry blossom and moss gardens and like all temples the grounds are full of shops selling a variety of religious tat – usually gee-gaws and trinkets designed to bring “good luck” or “good health” etc. – if they can’t get money from the punters at these shops then strategically placed around the garden are small bowls at which people throw coins – land it directly in the (small) bowl and you will have good luck” or “good health” etc. –it’s a bit like throwing ping-pong balls into goldfish bowls at the fairground but at least if you get it in the bowl their you usually win a goldfish not an empty promise.
As the shadows lengthened we made our way to our final destination – Ryoan-Ji. You’ve probably seen the picture of the rock garden here – it’s one of the symbols of Kyoto and one of Japan’s better known sites. There is no doubt that it’s a mesmerising and attractive sight but the water gardens around the temple are also incredibly beautiful and frequently ignored it seems. The rock garden is an oblong of carefully raked sand with an austere collection of 15 carefully placed rocks enclosed by an earthen wall. It is stunning in its simplicity and harmony and, evidently, contains one of the great enigmas of Zen koans (like ‘the sound of one hand clapping’). At no point is it possible to see all 15 stones, there is always one or more hidden from view. A perfect end to our day of gardens.

Just before we came away on this journey we would get moments of stomach churning doubt about if we were doing the right thing. This morning we both had another of those stomach churning moments when we realised that a week today we shall be on our way home. All the more reason not to falter now – tomorrow is ‘art’ day.