What is the Main Purpose of Japanese Gardens?

Hi there, I'm Josh from Shizen Style, and in this video I'm going to talk a little bit about why Japanese gardens are important in the first place, and what purposes do they serve. One of the main purposes of the Japanese garden is to bring harmony between nature and our busy daily lives. It's a space that celebrates the natural landscape together with human beings' creativity. A great garden may have a calming effect, or it could also be an exhilarating experience. It may seem like a completely natural scene, but nothing happens in a Japanese garden that is unplanned. Another main purpose is to provide an outlet of creativity, learning, and enjoyment for the garden designer, as well as the person maintaining it. This also then creates a landscape that can be enjoyed by other people experiencing it later on, as well as other photographers and filmmakers like myself who aim to capture a particular moment in time of the garden, and share our creative interpretation of the moment with other people. Depending on the garden's style, another purpose may be to extend the interior of the house, Providing a view from the house beyond the exterior walls makes you feel like you have a much bigger space than you actually do. Similarly, you're bringing the outside in by allowing nature to become a part of your daily life. Many Japanese homes are designed with this in mind. Large sliding glass doors or shoji screens can fully open up a wall and allow you to appreciate the garden from inside, and that blurs the lines between the interior and the exterior. It's the architecture of the house that is very connected to allowing us to be able to bring nature into our daily lives. Some people have also asked, what is the main purpose of a Zen garden? As mentioned before, there are a variety of different styles of Japanese gardens, and a Zen garden is only one type. Often referred to as a Zen rock garden, this type of garden serves the purpose of providing a meditative space for someone practicing Zen, specifically. Often sitting and contemplating the original garden designer's meaning behind the garden design, which will ideally lead you to a state of emptiness. It also provides a daily meditation in action for the monks or the people who maintain the garden at the temple, possibly through raking the garden gravel and creating different patterns. Through these repetitive mindful actions, it's said that enlightenment may be found. Sometimes a rock's settings are based on ancient Chinese Buddhist tales of legendary places like Mount Hodai in particular, where they say the Taoist immortals dwell. Zen gardens can often be distinguished from different types of Japanese gardens by the mere fact that they are situated in a Zen temple area. We often mistakenly call Japanese rock gardens, or kare-sansui in Japanese, we call them Zen gardens without taking into account where they actually are. A Japanese rock garden could be found in a Shinto shrine, a Pure Land Buddhism paradise garden, a home garden, a museum, or a prefectural public park. All of these places can highlight a Japanese rock garden without focusing on the religion aspects of a Zen Buddhist garden. The main purpose for their Japanese rock garden is more likely to create an artistic and intriguing landscape that still has the elements that represent a traditional Japanese garden. A Japanese restaurant, for example, may have a small area outside the window where they want to highlight a minimalist rock garden with moss and a limited number of plantings. Their main purpose is to create either a traditional Japanese atmosphere or a modern rustic Japanese garden, which sets the mood for the diners and it may be completely devoid of religious undertones. And from a practical standpoint, their purpose may have been to create a low-maintenance type of garden. So why are Japanese gardens important? I think Japanese gardens are important because they allow us to discover ourselves in nature. In Japanese, this is a term called Kacho Fugetsu, which I have a whole video dedicated towards if you're interested in checking that out. We can do this in the Japanese garden because these gardens are meant to be an interpretation of nature and blend of human beings' creativity in the natural realm. They're nature-inspired but are heavily controlled and maintained. What they do teach us, though, is that no matter how much you try to control something, in the end, we're at the whim of Mother Nature. The Japanese garden is a living work of art and is an ongoing process with no final end in sight. Every year, the seasons change and the garden changes. As we grow, we learn to change with the garden as well. Overall, Japanese gardens are important because they provide a space to allow our minds to wander to another land or another time or be present and mindful in the moment. They are a creative space that is both calming and exciting at the same time. The main purpose of Japanese gardens in contemporary Japanese culture may, however, be changing. I've talked with many Japanese garden designers and they're searching for a balance between the modern Japanese home and the modern Japanese person. Throughout history, there's never really only been one type of representative Japanese garden. There's many different styles, like Japanese rock gardens, Japanese strolling gardens, or tea gardens, and they all have changed throughout history. There was no one static time when you can say, this is what the garden is. The current landscape in Japan is also changing and the values of modern Japanese people are changing. With Japanese gardens being so highly connected to architecture though, this also plays a significant role in how the Japanese garden is viewed and utilized. Many modern Japanese gardeners are still studying the traditional ways of garden design and are using that as a base to springboard their own creativity. In a modern Japanese home, many families are looking for something that can still be considered Japanese, but can also provide a function in the family's life. Many families are looking for a garden that complements their home, that may also have a deck, for example, or an area that the children are able to play in. But they still would like this space to be aesthetically pleasing, often because of the sheer limited amount of space available to modern city dwellers. These areas have to be combined. So for them, the main purpose of a Japanese garden is a place where they can experience nature as a family. It'll be interesting to see where this Japanese garden tradition goes in the future. Without knowing the rules of a tradition though, you can't really know when you're breaking the rules and stepping into a realm of creativity. I encourage you to make an effort to study traditional Japanese gardens and then learn what rules you might want to break given your personal living situation and creative desire. That's when Japanese gardens and your Shizen style begin to really come alive. There really is no one kind of Japanese garden though, so I encourage you to subscribe to my Japanese Gardens playlist and check out the following video on the four main types of Japanese gardens.