Customer Reviews

Japanese Residences and Gardens

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I bought the book because I intend to build a japanese style house.This book is useless in residence design.The title is wrong!The book is about famous royal palaces and sorroundings.It contains exactly nineteen beautiful color pictures, showing some general views of six imperial palaces and gardens. Short descriptions and historical details are presented with a score of black and white pictures and some sketcks.

It is difficult to believe that this ordinary book was written by the former leading authority in premodern Japanese architecture.

I recommend "Form & Space in Japanese Architecture" by Norman Carver Jr, who really understood and captured the the japanese spirit.

I read the first edition of this book, wich dates from 1995. So the information is old, though relevant.
If Japanese gardens are new to you and you want a quick insight into this matter (on less than 30 pages of text), exemplified on some 5 of the most important gardens in Japan to learn about the history and its most important aspect: the integration of the garden with the surrounding architecture, this is a good book.
One of the advantages of reading older books, like this one, is that is shows you fotos which are old too. This book contains fotos from gardens in times long go by, in which you can see many differences with the actual situation. So also it gives you some clues on the development of these gardens. For example the foto of Ryoanji shows the garden with the surrounding earthen wall topped with a tiled roof. This roof over the wall is now made of bark, which to my opinion looks nicer because of its more informal character.
Though old, I liked this book.