Landscape Gardening in Japan [Hardcover]

Josiah Conder (Author), Josiah Condor (Author), Azby Brown (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 2002

Landscape Gardening in Japan was first published in 1893 by Josiah Conder, a British architect, urban planner, and teacher, who had come to Japan in 1877 to serve as a professor of architecture at the forerunner of Tokyo University and as a consultant to the Ministry of Engineering.
A man of wide interests, Conder was encouraged by the warm reception given his 1891 Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement to undertake a book on gardening. In preparing the present book, he relied not entirely on his own observations but consulted, and "freely borrowed from," some of the most reliable Japanese sources available at the time, the oldest dating to 1633. The resulting book is the product of a Western, Victorian perspective with access to Japanese authoritative texts.
Conder's study of the Japanese landscape garden led him to conclude that it represented universal qualities that could be applied to gardening anywhere. In addition to a discussion of these broader truths, the book is so finely detailed and so richly illustrated that it still serves today as a guide to modern garden-lovers, whether of a practical or a theoretical bent. The present volume combines the original study with an additional volume of photographs of famous gardens that was published shortly thereafter and entitled Supplement to Landscape Gardening in Japan. The interior of the book has been redesigned and the text newly set for easier reading and viewing.
The book has a new Foreword by Azby Brown and an Afterword by Terunobu Fujimori, providing background information on Conder and putting his accomplishments into perspective.
Jacket Illustration: Yokuon-en Zenzu (detail), National Diet Library. The Yokuon-en garden and villa was constructed by Matsudaira Sadanobu around 1794. (See Conder's description in Chapter 1 under Yoku-on-En.) The present illustration is a copy of an original bird's-eye view commemoratively painted in 1842 after the garden's destruction by fire in 1829.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This gardening classic treatise remains as informative and insightful as ever. Includes rare photographs of famous gardens taken around the turn of the century..."[Serves] both the historian and gardener as important cultural documentation."

From the Publisher

Foreword (abridged)

Josiah Conder was arguably the central figure in the establishment of modern Western architectural and construction practice in Japan. As a designer, his 50-plus built structures provided tangible models of Western style and thought; as an educator the curriculum he established at the Imperial College of Engineering (now the Department of Engineering at the University of Tokyo) shaped the first native Japanese architects in the technical and theoretical aspects of the craft, and they in turn passed their knowledge on to succeeding generations. And finally, Conder's writings on Japanese architecture and its allied arts had a tremendous influence abroad, appearing at a time when informed first-hand accounts of Japanese buildings and their environments by Westerners were still quite rare. The present volume, Landscape Gardening in Japan, is a reprint of Conder's landmark work, originally published in 1893, some 16 years after his arrival in Japan; this book was revised and reissued in 1912.

It is interesting to keep in mind that a ready audience existed in America and Europe for books of this sort, and indeed its initial popularity is not surprising. The fad of "Japonisme" had been in swing for over a decade by the early 1890s, having been fueled by exhibitions and collections of more portable items, such as ukioye woodblock prints, pottery, and decorative artifacts. But actual buildings and gardens were difficult, if not impossible to see without actually traveling to Japan, a tremendous undertaking a century ago. Written accounts of the Japanese manner of building, occasionally touching on the subject of gardens, had appeared sporadically even before the opening of the country to the West in 1868. Marco Polo, for instance, described Japanese cities as being filled with buildings made of gold, and a handful of Dutch and Portuguese accounts from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, often published and fancifully illustrated years later in Europe, mention, usually disparagingly, the buildings and gardens encountered. After the Meiji Restoration and the opening of the country, the Japanese government exhibited traditional buildings, often with gardens, at international expositions in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Paris in 1878 -- precursors of a notable contribution sent to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 -- and many Westerners were able to get a taste of authentic Japanese design during these events. But if one was deeply interested in Japanese gardens, and wanted to know more, or perhaps wanted to make an authentic one for oneself, there were few sources of good information. Conder's book stepped into this breach.

Prior to this, Conder had written about flowers and flower arranging and contributed articles on Japanese building practice to scholarly journals. And notably, his colleague at the Imperial College, the American zoologist Edwin S. Morse, had published a wonderfully evocative and detailed book entitled Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings in 1886. While biographical details about Conder's personal life and associations are scarce, it can be inferred that the "establishment/academic" Conder was not on particularly close terms with the "populist/romantic" Morse -- for the latter was an architectural amateur, though in the best sense. And yet if the men themselves were not partners, their books definitely are. Morse describes and illustrates a couple of gardens, but the focus of his book is interiors and details, warmly depicted. And though he was unquestionably qualified to do so, Conder never produced a major written work about Japanese architecture, domestic or otherwise. In! Landscape Gardening in Japan, the role of buildings in garden design is noted, and several illustrations feature beautifully depicted teahouses and other structures -- particularly the lithographed plates XXXI and XXXII (by the Japanese artist E. Kojima), whose subtle ochre tinting unfortunately cannot be conveyed in the present edition. But Conder concentrates on comprehensively cataloguing the types of plants, rocks, lanterns, gates, fences, and other features used in gardens proper, and provides a similarly detailed resume of historical and poetic allusion, and of design principles and theory. And as has been mentioned by previous writers, the photographs by K. Ogawa included in the supplement to the original edition form an invaluable record of the appearance and condition of important gardens at the turn of the century.

To the original audience, then, Conder's book could serve as a gardening manual. The illustrations dealing with layout -- such as XXVIII, XXVIX, and XXX -- are schematic enough that the compositional principles outlined in the text can be easily grasped. And the depictions of arbors (XXIV), bridges (such as XXIII), fences (such as XVIII and XIX), lanterns ( V, VI, and VII), and other items are clear and detailed enough to serve as the basis for reproduction. When coupled with the included photographs, and perhaps bolstered by other visual sources, Landscape Gardening in Japan contained enough information to enable a garden designer in the West to create a respectable replica, and undoubtedly it has been used in this fashion time and again.

The present audience, however, is blessed with a greater abundance of sources. Entire shelves can be filled with beautifully illustrated volumes on Japanese gardens -- on Zen gardens, on landscape gardens, on creating Japanese gardens for oneself, on Japanese gardens in many seasons, on small gardens, on the use of water in Japanese gardens, and so on. Japanese gardens are among the most photographed in the world, and any number of large format books, beautifully printed in color, can be found. And yet very few books deal with garden design theory the way Conder's does.

In seeking to explain everything thoroughly, however, Conder sometimes slips into generalizations. No doubt he is describing things as they were presented to him, and he undoubtedly had access to prominent authorities and was able to see almost everything he wanted to for himself. But when he states unequivocally in his introduction that "A garden in Japan is a representation of the scenery of the country, though it is essentially a Japanese representation. Favorite rural spots and famous views serve as models for its composition and arrangement," he is overstating. As he elaborates on this theme, one gets the impression that every Japanese garden is based on actual scenery, or on a specific set of mythical and religious imagery, and this is not the case. He gives proper note to the different degrees of formality -- shin, gyo, so, or "finished," "intermediary," and "rough" -- and to the role of custom and notions of propriety in garden design. He clearly conveys the fact that the best gardens are based on well-established rules. But readers today might detect that Conder was from the outset working against a prevailing popular impression that Japanese gardens were chaotic or freakish, and that he strove to counter these ideas with a somewhat heavy emphasis on rules of order....

Azby Brown

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (May 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770028520
• ISBN-13: 978-4770028525
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,044,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Landscape Gardening in Japan, July 23, 2005

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E. Xu "Emily Omnes" (Auckland, NZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Landscape Gardening in Japan (Hardcover)

This is classic book but very instructural. Not much photos but gives you idea and makes your mind do the work. If you are into Japanese Culture then this is highly recommended.