Getting Closer to the Mystery of the Garden at Ryoan-ji Temple

This is Ryoan-ji, founded in the year 1450. Ryoan-ji is located at the foot of Mount Kinugasa in the northern part of Kyoto city. Its stone garden is internationally known. This is the garden. It is 25 meters wide This garden is enclosed by an earthen wall. It has a very simple design with only 15 stones of various sizes and a bed of white sand. The gravel is raked in a pattern. It is regularly raked by the head priest of Ryoan-ji. This garden was written about in a guidebook published in the late Edo period showcasing famous gardens in Kyoto. The book praised it as the best garden in the northern part of Kyoto, indicating that it was already highly regarded more than 200 years ago. In 1994, this stone garden and the entire temple grounds were registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The garden is highly acclaimed worldwide and even today it is visited by many tourists and loved by people from all over the world. Ryoan-ji, which was founded in 1450, first burnt down around 20 years later during the Onin War, which lasted for more than 10 years. It burnt down again in 1797 and again in 1929. In total, it was burnt down three times. The black marks on this earthen wall are said to be caused by the fires. The garden side has these black marks, but there are no such marks on the reverse side. With the loss of literature on Ryoan-ji, information about this garden has also ceased to exist. As a result, this garden at Ryoan-ji is a great mystery. When was this garden created? Who made it? And what is the intention? For hundreds of years now, many researchers have studied this garden at Ryoan-ji. Over that long period of time, who built it? Why it was designed the way it was, and various theories and speculations have emerged. However, no hard evidence has yet come forward and everything remains a mystery. Let me explain one famous discourse here. These 15 stones are arranged in such a way that when viewed from this building, one of the stones is not visible from any angle. The layout of these stones clearly shows the intent of the creator. In the opinion of many researchers, this may be related to Eastern philosophy. The moon waxes and wanes over a period of about 15 days. And since the 15th day is a full moon, there is an Eastern belief that the number 15 represents perfection. Based on this philosophy, the fact that one of the 15 stones is not to be shown may represent imperfection. Many researchers have made this speculation. However, this discourse is also speculative and there is no literature on this fact. Because there are no clear answers, various speculations regarding the garden at Ryoan-ji have circled for hundreds of years. If you look closely at the ground in this garden, it appears to be level at first glance. But it seems to be getting lower toward the southeast corner. From this angle, the southeast corner appears extremely low. In addition, let us look at the earthen walls. This one is more obvious. The western earthen wall is clearly higher on the north side. And the height of the earthen wall decreases as one moves south. Regarding this design, researchers have speculated that this may have utilized the western method of perspective. Perspective is a drawing technique used to bring objects and landscapes drawn on a flat surface closer to the actual sense of sight. This technique has enabled the creation of paintings with depth. The creator of this garden was conscious of this technique of perspective. The height of the ground and the earthen wall may have been designed to be extremely special. Certainly, when I look out to this garden attentively, I have an acute sense of perspective and I am not quite sure what it is. It is as if the space is distorted. However, this too can only be speculation as no hard evidence has been found as to whether the creator intended to design it this way or not. This bamboo fence is called a ryoanji fence. This bamboo fence is a unique design of ryoanji made of split and crossed bamboo. This is also speculation, but this pattern may represent the scales of a dragon, or ryu in Japanese. This character for ryu in ryoanji represents this imaginary creature. This ryu creature is said to have fish scales on its body. The pattern of this ryoanji fence is thus speculated to represent the scales of that ryu, or dragon. As explained, there are many speculations about ryoanji, but as yet there is no hard evidence to verify any of them. That is why lots of people still ponder this garden. Once we know who built the garden, when, and with what intention, we do not need to wonder about it anymore. But no one knows anything about this garden and ryoanji in depth. It is as if it forces us to think. Perhaps it is precisely because it is shrouded in mystery like this, that it has fascinated so many people for hundreds of years, both in the past and in the present. I hope one day you will visit the garden, confront it, and think about it. you